"Oh! I wonder who it would be? What like was he?" "Tall," said Mona, ticking off his various attributes on the fingers of her left hand, "thin, ugly, lanky. In fact,"--she broke off with a laugh,--"in spite of his height, he conveyed a general impression to my mind of what one of our lecturers describes as 'failure to attain the anatomical and physiological ideal.' He was loosely hung together like a cheap clothes-horse, and he wore his garments in much the same fashion that a clothes-horse does." (This, as her customer's tailor could have certified, was most unjust. A vivid recollection of the Sahib was making Mona hypercritical.) "The down of manhood had not settled on his upper lip with what you could call luxuriance; he wore spectacles----" "Spectacles!" repeated Rachel, alighting with relief on a bit of firm foothold in a stretch of quicksand. "You don't mean--was he a _gentleman_?" "I suppose so. Yes." "Oh! I might have gone on guessing for an hour. You said he was a _man_." "God made him, and so I was prepared to let him pass for one, as Portia says. Did you think the term was too complimentary?" Rachel laughed. "Had he on a suit of dark-blue serge?" "Now you suggest it, I believe he had." "And had he a pleasant frank-like way with him?" "Yes." "It would be Dr Dudley. What was he wanting here?" "India-rubber." "Well, I am sure there was plenty of that. I got a boxful years and years ago, and nobody has been asking for it at all lately." "I should imagine not," thought Mona. "Once bit, twice shy." "Is he the resident doctor?" she asked. "Oh no! He does not belong to these parts. He comes from London. When you were going down to the braes, did you notice a big white house with a large garden and a lodge, just at the beginning of the Kirkstoun road?" "Yes--a fine house." "His old aunt lives there--Mistress Hamilton. She used to come here just for the summer, and bring a number of visitors with her; but latterly she has stayed here most of the time, unless when she is ordered to some Spa or other. She says no air agrees with her like this. He is her heir. She makes a tremendous work with him; I believe he is the only living thing she cares for in the world. He mostly spends his holidays with her, and whiles, when she's more ailing than usual, he comes down from London on the Friday night, and goes up again on the Sunday night." "He can't have a very large practice in London, surely, if he can do that." "He's not rightly practising at all, yet. He has been a doctor for some years, but he is studying for something else. I don't understand it myself. But he is very clever; he gave me some powders that cured my rheumatism in a few days, when Dr Burns had been working away half the winter with lotions and fomentations, and lime-juice, and----" "----alkalies," thought Mona. "Much more scientific treatment than the empirical use of salicin." For Mona was young and had never suffered from rheumatism.