"Very well, Anne, then! We can let it go at that. Fire away!" The doctor looks round his own corner at the rows of pearls and the laugh that frames them, the merry eyebrows and the scintillating eyes they accentuate. A perilous intoxication, not to be too freely indulged in by a serious professional man at any time--in business hours certainly not. But if the doctor were quite in earnest over a sort of Spartan declaration of policy his heart feels the prudence of, would that responsive twinkle flutter in his face behind its mock gravity? He is all but head over ears in love with Sally--so why pretend? Really, we don't know--and that's the truth. "Wouldn't it be a good way to consider what it is that is really the matter, and make out the statement accordingly?" He goes on looking at Sally, scratches himself under the chin with his pen, and waits for an answer. "Good, sensible, general practitioner! See how practical he is! Now, I should never have thought of that!" "Well, what shall we put her down as? Chronic arthritis--spinal curvature--tuberculosis of the cervical vertebrae?" "Those all sound very nice. But I don't think it matters which you choose. If she hasn't got it now, she'll develop it if I describe it. When I told her mother couldn't get rid of her neuritis, she immediately asked to know the symptoms, and forthwith claimed them as her own. 'Well, there now, and to think what I was just a-sayin' to Shoosmith, this very morning! Just in the crick of the thumb-joint, you can't 'ardly abear yourself!' And then she told how she said to Shoosmith frequent, where was the use of his getting impatient, and exclaimin' the worst expressions? Because his language went beyond a quart, and no reasonable excuse." "Mr. Shoosmith doesn't seem a very promising sort? He's a tailor, isn't he?" "No; he's a messenger. He runs on errands and does odd jobs. But he can't run--I've seen him!--he can only shamble. And his voice is hoarse and inaudible. And he has a drawback--two drawbacks, in fact. He is no sooner giv' coppers on a job than he drinks them." "What's the other?" "His susceptibility to intoxicants. His 'ed is that weak that 'most anythink upsets him. So you see." "Poor chap! He's handicapped in the race of life. As for his wife, when I saw her she was suffering with acute rheumatism and bad feeling--and, I may add, defective reasoning power. However...." The doctor fills in blanks, adds a signature, says "There we are!" and Mrs. Shoosmith is disposed of as an applicant to the institution, and will no doubt reap some benefits we need not know the particulars of. But she remains as a subject for the student of human life--also, tea comes--also, which is interesting, Sally proceeds to make it.