Frank Barton, the speaker, had been at school with Maitland, and ever since, at college and in life, had bullied, teased, and befriended him. Barton was a big young man, with great thews and sinews, and a broad, breast beneath his broadcloth and wide shirt-front. He was blonde, prematurely bald, with an aquiline commanding nose, keen, merry blue eyes, and a short, fair beard. He had taken a medical as well as other degrees at the University; he had studied at Vienna and Paris; he was even what Captain Costigan styles “a scoientific cyarkter.” He had written learnedly in various Proceedings of erudite societies; he had made a cruise in a man-of-war, a scientific expedition; and his _Les Tatouages, Étude Médico-Lêgale_, published in Paris, had been commended by the highest authorities. Yet, from some whim of philanthropy, he had not a home and practice in Cavendish Square, but dwelt and labored in Chelsea. “How is your pothouse getting on?” he asked again. “The pothouse? Oh, the _Hit or Miss_ you mean? Well, I’m afraid it’s not very successful I took the lease of it, you know, partly by way of doing some good in a practical kind of way. The working men at the waterside won’t go to clubs, where there is nothing but coffee to drink, and little but tracts to read. I thought if I gave them sound beer, and looked in among them now and then of an evening, I might help to civilize them a bit, like that fellow who kept the Thieves’ Club in the East End. And then I fancied they might help to make _me_ a little more human. But it does not seem quite to succeed. I fear I am a born wet blanket But the idea is good. Mrs. St. John Delo-raine quite agrees with me about _that_. And she is a high authority.” “Mrs. St. John Deloraine? I’ve heard of her. She is a lively widow, isn’t she?” “She is a practical philanthropist,” answered Maitland, flushing a little. “Pretty, too, I have been told?” “Yes; she is ‘conveniently handsome,’ as Izaak Walton says.” “I say, Maitland, here’s a chance to humanize you. Why don’t you ask her to marry you? Pretty and philanthropic and rich--what better would you ask?” “I wish everyone wouldn’t bother a man to marry,” Maitland replied testily, and turning red in his peculiar manner; for his complexion was pale and unwholesome. “What a queer chap you are, Maitland; what’s the matter with you? Here you are, young, entirely without encumbrances, as the advertisements say, no relations to worry you, with plenty of money, let alone what you make by writing, and yet you are not happy. What is the matter with you?” “Well, you should know best What’s the good of your being a doctor, and acquainted all these years with my moral and physical constitution (what there is of it), if you can’t tell what’s the nature of my complaint?” “I don’t diagnose many cases like yours, old boy, down by the side of the water, among the hardy patients of Mundy & Barton, general practitioners. There is plenty of human nature _there!_”