I was exceedingly interested to see how these two would get on--the Doctor and Hugh John, I mean. Because my brother is by no means universally amiable, and the new arrival, for all his generosity, carried a good deal of "side"--or at least what seemed so to the Edam people. They did not understand his "antiseptics," the boiling of his medical scissors, his multipled sprayings, and _minima_ of medicines. A whacking black draught, and a fly-blister the size of the _Scotsman_ newspaper, were the popular idea of what a real doctor ought to prescribe. Who would pay a man just to come and look at them? Certainly not the people of Edam. I was present when Hugh John and Dr. Weir Douglas met for the first time. In fact, I made the introduction. I was interested to see what Dr. Douglas would make of Hugh John. For if he treated him like a schoolboy, all was over. It was in our drawing-room. Somebody had had his little afternoon nap over Froude's _History of England_--volume eight. Now if you ask Somebody how long Somebody has slept, Somebody will answer that Somebody _may_ just have dropped off for five minutes. The Doctor had come in to call socially. You see, I had met him at the Tennis Club. Well, Somebody was quite pleased with him because he had read "Froude," and for a while he did not notice the big, gray-eyed boy on the window-seat who had risen at his entrance and then as quietly sat down again. But I said, "Doctor--my brother Hugh John!" Then Hugh John loomed up, with that quiet gravity which deceives strangers sometimes, his finger still keeping the place in William's _Middle Kingdom_, and his eyes meeting those of the Doctor level as the metals on a straight run of the railway line. The Doctor was ready to pass the lad in order to talk with Somebody--who, as usual, lay back looking amused. But that arresting something in Hugh John's eyes, a mixture of equality and authority, halted him, as it has done so many others. "You are reading?" said the Doctor civilly. "Oh, no," said Hugh John, "just picking out favorite bits. Do you know _The Middle Kingdom_?" Now _The Middle Kingdom_ is an exceedingly fine book, highly technical in parts, and has to do with China. So it is no wonder that it was not so familiar to a man who for years has had to specialize on surgery as it was to the omnivorous Hugh John. Dr. Weir Douglas shook his head as he glanced over the volume. "It looks very stiff," he remarked; "are you getting it up for an exam.?" Hugh John looked at him curiously. He did not approve of jests on such subjects. "I read it first when I was about ten," he said. "I only wish exams were as easy." "Is it 'math'?" the Doctor inquired sympathetically. "Yes," said Hugh John, "that--and the idiocies of English spelling!" All this as from man to man, unsmiling, unwinking, each taking the measure of the other.