Hence it was that on a certain morning of the long vacation I found myself installed at The Larches, Burling, in full charge of the practice of my old friend Dr. Hanshaw, who was taking a fishing holiday in Norway.  I was not left desolate, however, for Mrs. Hanshaw remained at her post, and the roomy, old-fashioned house accommodated three visitors in addition.  One of these was Dr. Hanshaw’s sister, a Mrs. Haldean, the widow of a wealthy Manchester cotton factor; the second was her niece by marriage, Miss Lucy Haldean, a very handsome and charming girl of twenty-three; while the third was no less a person than Master Fred, the only child of Mrs. Haldean, and a strapping boy of six.

“It is quite like old times—­and very pleasant old times, too—­to see you sitting at our breakfast-table, Dr. Jervis.”  With these gracious words and a friendly smile, Mrs. Hanshaw handed me my tea-cup.

I bowed.  “The highest pleasure of the altruist,” I replied, “is in contemplating the good fortune of others.”

Mrs. Haldean laughed.  “Thank you,” she said.  “You are quite unchanged, I perceive.  Still as suave and as—­shall I say oleaginous?”

“No, please don’t!” I exclaimed in a tone of alarm.

“Then I won’t.  But what does Dr. Thorndyke say to this backsliding on your part?  How does he regard this relapse from medical jurisprudence to common general practice?”

“Thorndyke,” said I, “is unmoved by any catastrophe; and he not only regards the ‘Decline and Fall-off of the Medical Jurist’ with philosophic calm, but he even favours the relapse, as you call it.  He thinks it may be useful to me to study the application of medico-legal methods to general practice.”

“That sounds rather unpleasant—­for the patients, I mean,” remarked Miss Haldean.

“Very,” agreed her aunt.  “Most cold-blooded.  What sort of man is Dr. Thorndyke?  I feel quite curious about him.  Is he at all human, for instance?”

“He is entirely human,” I replied; “the accepted tests of humanity being, as I understand, the habitual adoption of the erect posture in locomotion, and the relative position of the end of the thumb—­”

“I don’t mean that,” interrupted Mrs. Haldean.  “I mean human in things that matter.”

“I think those things matter,” I rejoined.  “Consider, Mrs. Haldean, what would happen if my learned colleague were to be seen in wig and gown, walking towards the Law Courts in any posture other than the erect.  It would be a public scandal.”

“Don’t talk to him, Mabel,” said Mrs. Hanshaw; “he is incorrigible.  What are you doing with yourself this morning, Lucy?”

Miss Haldean (who had hastily set down her cup to laugh at my imaginary picture of Dr. Thorndyke in the character of a quadruped) considered a moment.

“I think I shall sketch that group of birches at the edge of Bradham Wood,” she said.

“Then, in that case,” said I, “I can carry your traps for you, for I have to see a patient in Bradham.”