To the Rev. Bruce Harding, S. Peter's College, Morecambe Bay Sept. 14th 202 XXV To Hugh Pontrex, Villa Rosa, Mentone Oct. 3rd 219 XXVI To John Summers, M.B., c/o the Rev. W. B. La Touche, High Barn, Winchester Oct. 18th 231 XXVII To Miss Sarah Harding, The Orphanage, Little Blessington, Dorset Nov. 7th 242 XXVIII To Miss Josephine Summers, The Cottage, Potham, Beds. Nov. 26th 249 XXXIX To the Rev. Bruce Harding, S. Peter's College, Morecambe Bay Dec. 2nd 251 XXX To Hugh Pontrex, Villa Rosa, Mentone Dec. 25th 255 I _To Robert Lynn, M.R.C.S., Applebrook, Devon._ 91B HARLEY STREET, W., _March_ 4, 1910. MY DEAR BOB, Your letter of this morning, like the cream that it was, rose naturally to the surface of the little pile of correspondence that awaited me on the breakfast-table; and if I didn't read it then, and am only answering it now, in front of my dressing-room fire, there are more reasons than one for this. You might even detect a little pathos, perhaps, in the chief of these. For I can't help feeling that a younger man--myself, for example, twenty years ago--would have been into it before you could say scalpel, snatching his joy as one of your own parr will take a Wickham on a clear pool before the half-pounder beside him has even decided to inspect it. And if I have not done this, if I have learned the better way, the art of lingering, the value of the "bouquet," well, there's a rather forlorn piece of scalp in the opposite looking-glass to tell me the reason why. So you see that I didn't rush headlong at your letter, tearing it open with a feverish, if mature, forefinger. I even ignored the twinkle in my wife's eye, and the more impertinent expression that Miss Molly was permitting to rest upon her usually calm features. "Another lump, my pet," was all I said, and stirred my coffee with that inscrutable calm so justly associated with Destiny, Wisdom, and the Consulting Physician. "He's pretending not to be excited," explained Miss Molly to a college friend across the table; and Claire, all chestnut mop and black-stockinged legs (and convalescent, by the way, from the mumps), gurgled suddenly over her Henty when she ought by rights to have been completely breathless. Through the open window a pleasant breeze stirred lazily across the table, decked with its stolen sweets from our own and our neighbours' hyacinths. And in a welcome sunshine the windows of Sir Jeremy's consulting-room beamed as merrily as their owner's eyes. "And not even one spark of enthusiasm," proceeded Molly. "Oh, who would have a mere physician for a parent?" "For the elderly," I told her, "excitement is to be deprecated. Now if I were twenty-four, perhaps----"