The man of science, who bore the undignified name of Merribody, was a youth of twenty-five or six, though the gravity of his countenance was worthy a practitioner of fifty. His frame was short, and roundest in the middle, and his limbs and neck of conformable brevity and dumpiness. His face corresponded with his body, being round as a melon, with features all highly insignificant, except his nose, which had a short and delicate pug that gave it some importance. His complexion had been originally fair, and his locks flaxen; but a few years' exposure to sun and sleet had communicated a certain foxy swarthiness to both, so that his eyes, which were of a light gray, were now entirely visible. His eye-brows had maintained their original creamy hue; and being the only part of the countenance possessing any great mobility, their motions up and down, and to and fro, were always distinguishable; and indeed they flitted about under the shadow of his hat, like two snowy moths entangled in a cobweb. Though no figure in the world could have been worse adapted to purposes of dignity, Dr. Merribody had thought proper to assume an important air, which he always preserved, except when irritated out of his decorum; a circumstance that not unfrequently happened, owing to a temper naturally testy and inflammable. His countenance he kept in a perpetual frown; and he cultivated an attitude he thought expressive of professional dignity, in which his feet were planted as far from one another as the length of his legs permitted, his head thrown back, or rather his chin turned up, for his neck was too short to allow much liberty to the temple of the soul, and his hands thrust into his breeches pockets; in which attitude he presented a miniature representation of the Rhodian Colossus. He had even bestowed much cultivation upon his voice, which being of a childish treble, and therefore highly incompatible with all pretensions to gravity, he forced it into artificial profundity, and spoke with a husky, catarrhal tone, a sort of falsetto bass, exceedingly pompous, and indeed sometimes majestic. However, the same testy temper which so often robbed him of his dignity of carriage, as frequently threw his voice into its hautboy alto; and on those occasions, he did not appear to advantage. At the present moment, the doctor certainly might be said to be in his glory; for the sight of a patient threw him into the best humour in the world;--and by the presence of his two friends, without counting the stranger and Aunt Rachel, he was assured of witnesses to his skill in a case, which he declared, while trudging up stairs, to be 'exceedingly critical and interesting.' Notwithstanding this favourable condition of things, however, the man of the red hat conceived but a mean opinion of Dr. Merribody's professional skill; and having eyed him a second time, without finding any reason to alter his opinion, he demanded, in no very