“No doubt an excellent man, Mrs Gabbon; but I should like to know of one as near at hand as possible. Now I see the name of a Dr Twiddel——” “I wouldn’t recommend ’im, sir,” said Mrs Gabbon, pursing her mouth. “Indeed? Why not?” “’E attended Mrs Brown’s servant-girl, sir,—she bein’ the lady as has the ’ouse next door,—and what he give _’er_ didn’t do no good. Mrs Brown tell me ’erself.” “Still, in an emergency——” “Besides which, he ain’t at ’ome, sir.” “Where has he gone?” “Abroad, they do say, sir; though I don’t rightly know much about ’im.” “Has he been away long?” Mrs Gabbon considered. “It must ’ave bin before the middle of November he went, sir.” “Ha!” exclaimed Mr Bunker, keenly, though apparently more to himself than his landlady. “I beg your pardon, sir?” “The middle of November, you say? That’s a long holiday for a doctor to take.” “’E ’avn’t no practice to speak of,—not as I knows of, leastways.” “What sort of a man is he—young or old?” “By my opinion, sir, ’e’s too young. I don’t ’old by them young doctors. Now Dr Smith, sir——” “Dr Twiddel is quite a young man, then?” “What I’d call little better than a boy, sir. They tell me they lets ’em loose very young nowadays.” “About twenty-five, say?” “’E might be that, sir; but I don’t know much about ’im, sir. Now Dr Smith, sir, ’e’s different.” In fact at this point Mrs Gabbon showed such a tendency to turn the conversation back to the merits of Dr Smith and the precise nature of Mr Bunker’s ailment, that her lodger, in despair, requested her to bring up a cup of tea as speedily as possible. “Before the middle of November,” he said to himself. “It is certainly a curious coincidence.” To a gentleman of Mr Bunker’s sociable habits and active mind, the prospect of sitting day by day in the company of his theological treatises and talkative landlady, and watching an apparently uninhabited house, seemed at first sight even less entertaining than a return to Clankwood. But, as he said of himself, he possessed a kind of easy workaday philosophy, and, besides that, an apparently irresistible attraction for the incidents of life. He had barely finished his cup of tea, and was sitting over the fire smoking one of the Baron’s cigars and looking through one of the few books he had brought that bore no relation to divinity, his feet high upon the side of the mantelpiece, his ready-made costume perhaps a little more unbuttoned than the strictest propriety might approve, and a stiff glass of whisky-and-water at his elbow, when there came a rap at his door. In response to his “Come in,” a middle-aged gentleman, dressed in clerical attire, entered. He had a broad, bearded face, a dull eye, and an indescribably average aspect. “The devil! Mr John Duggs himself,” thought Mr Bunker, hastily adopting a more conventional attitude and feeling for his button-holes. “Ah—er—Mr Butler, I believe?” said the stranger, with an apologetic air. “The same,” replied Mr Bunker, smiling affably.