"I have left off trying to account for these things," explained the doctor. "About your medicine now. I want you——" But Mrs. Roper had struck a more fascinating theme than that of medicine. "Married!" she ejaculated. "Ha! Married! And she ser jolly! Ser good-tempered, ser fussy, ser full o’ compliments! No wonder as my man likes to play nap at ’is cousin Alfered’s. There’s two or three jolly ones together in _that_ ’ouse. "She’s a ’igh-spirited lady too. Ser full of romps an’ all. She reads the papers, too, and listens to their jokes, _and laughs_. "Well, well, Doctor, it’s time that wooden ulster come. It won’t arrive before I’m ready for it. This world ain’t no fit place for me. "I ain’t jolly enough. "I’m only a honest wife, I am, what sits at ’ome all day an’ tells the truth while other people makes theirselves ser popular. This world is no fit place for honest wives. "The other ladies are ser jolly; they makes theirselves ser pleasant. They fuss about and flatter you, and laugh at all your jokes. They makes theirselves ser pleasant.... "What’s a respectable married woman to do, Doctor?" *XXVIII* *THE BLACK HAT* "What I like Banking Day for," James had privately informed me, "is because _then_ Fatty always puts on a cap. He looks so plain and friendly in a cap." At which I pondered deeply. That which I pondered was the important problem of Dr. Brink in his relationship to moral authority and the top-hat. I had to admit to myself that James’s aphorism was justified by facts. The doctor did look more human in a cap. Upon the other hand, he did not in the least look like himself. "Banking Day" is a solemn occasion in the Brink household. It happens once a fortnight. It affords the doctor an excuse for making holiday—a two hours holiday—the only regular holiday in which he permits himself to indulge. And of this regular and recurrent festival, the cap is an outward and visible sign: the cap and golfing shoes and a poacher’s jacket. And a solemn black bag. The solemn black bag is filled with sixpenny pieces. Thus equipped, the doctor goes into the City—"giving’em a treat in Gracechurch Street," he calls it—and deposits the toll which he has extracted from human misery upon some banker’s table. He then returns to Bovingdon Street, wearing your right usurer’s leer and a shilling cigar. And having in his right hand—the hand he pulls the teeth out with—a fat, white book. It is his vulgar custom, upon such occasions, to publish loudly a statement of accounts, as thus—