"After all," said he, "it's a bore! this alternation of knocking each other down which the nations of the earth practise,--and the societies,--and the men! It's a pugilistic world we live in, Linden. It's a bore to keep up with them,--for one must know who's atop--both in Europe and in Pattaquasset--where you are just now the king of men's mouths--And all the while it don't a pin signify, except to the one who is atop;--I beg your pardon!" "How long must I, being 'atop,' lie here? All this week?" "What will you do if I say more than that?" "Why I'll listen respectfully. Do you know I like to see you sitting there?--Here is another paper for you." The doctor looked at him with an odd, frankly inquisitive smile; but he only took the paper to play with it. "I wonder if I may ask a roundabout favour from you?" "You may ask anything--" said Mr. Linden. "I would rather have it in a straight-forward form." "Can't," said the doctor, "because it is crooked. I suppose at this hour every lady in Pattaquasset expects that her friends will not call her away from her affairs; and I stupidly forgot to deliver my message when I had a moment's chance this morning. Now as it is possible you may see this--if she cannot be called the silver-footed Thetis, she is certainly the silver-tongued--you would know how to address her?" "Thetis!--probably, when I see her." "I may presume you will know her when you see her,--and that brings me to my point. I have got some good microscopic preparations which I am to have the pleasure of exhibiting to-night to some friends of my sister. Now it would greatly add to her pleasure and mine, if this mortal Polyhymnia will consent to be of the number--and this is what I was going to ask you, if you please, to communicate to her or to her mother, in whose good graces, as I told you," said the doctor with a funny smile, "I don't think I have the honour to stand high. Sophy would have written this morning, but I gave her no chance. I will call for Miss Derrick this evening if she will allow me." Mr. Linden took out his pencil and made a note of the facts. "First," he said, "I am to communicate, then you are to call, after that to exhibit. Do you call that crooked?--why it's as straight as the road from here to your house." Dr. Harrison looked--and for a minute did not anything else. "For your arm, Linden," he said then getting up from his chair, and a smile of doubtful comicality moving his lip a little--"we shall know better about it in two or three weeks; but certainly I think you must be content to stay at home for double those--that's undoubted." Mr. Linden gave the doctor a quick glance, but the smile which followed was 'undoubted' in another way. "When two opposing forces meet at right angles, doctor," he said, "you know what happens to the object. Not contented inertia." "Contented! no, very likely,--not when it is _this_ object. But you will find a third force will establish the inertia."