It was my first professional visit to the Robinsons. I had been called in to prescribe for Arthur Robinson, a nervous, emaciated young man, whom I found extended on a black satin sofa, in a purple silk dressing gown embroidered with life-sized hydrangeas. The sofa and the dressing gown shrieked aloud his artistic temperament. He had a bronchial cold, and my visit was, as he said, purely precautionary. He kept me a long time recounting his symptoms, and assuring me that he was absolutely fearless, and then dragged himself to his feet and led me into the magnificent studio his mother had built for him, where his sketches were arranged on easels, and where we found his wife, a pale, dark-eyed young creature cleaning his brushes. He appeared--like most egotistic people--to be greatly in need of a listener, and he poured forth his views on art, and the form his own message to the world would probably take. I am unfortunately quite inartistic, but I gave him my attention. I was in no hurry, for at that time the one perpetual anxiety that dogged my waking hours was that I had not enough patients. At last I remembered that I ought not to appear to have time to spare, and his wife took me downstairs to the drawing-room, where his mother was awaiting us, a large, fair woman, with a kindly foolish face. I saw at once that I was in for another interview as long as the first. Mrs. Robinson did not wait for me to give an opinion on her son's condition. She pressed me to be perfectly frank, and, before I could open my mouth to reply, poured forth a stream of information on what was evidently her only theme--Arthur's health. "I said the day before yesterday--didn't I, Blanche. 'Arthur, you have got a cold.' And _he_ said, so like him--'No Mother, I haven't.' That is Arthur all over. Isn't it, Blanche?" Blanche made no response. She sat motionless, gazing at her mother-in-law with half absent eyes, as if she were trying--and failing--to give her whole attention to the matter in hand. "Then I said in my joking way, 'Arthur, I can't have you starting a cold, and giving it to me and Blanche.' We don't want any presents of that kind. Do we, Blanche?" Blanche made no reply. Perhaps experience had taught her that it was a waste of energy. "So I said, 'with your tendency to bronchitis I shall send for Doctor Giles, and it will be a good opportunity to make his acquaintance now that our dear Doctor Whittington has retired.'" It went on a long time, Mrs. Robinson beaming indiscriminately on me and her daughter-in-law. At last, when she was deeply involved in Arthur's teething, I murmured a few words and stood up to go. "You will promise faithfully, won't you, to look in again to-morrow." I said that a telephone message would summon me at any moment. As I held out my hand I heard a loud splash. "Now, Dr. Giles, you are wondering what _that_ is," said Mrs. Robinson gleefully.