“That’s it.  ‘Dr Burrows won’t listen to me’:  ’I tell him how I dislike the taste of spirits, but he says they are absolutely necessary for my constitution’:  ‘my medical man insists on something at bedtime’; that’s the style.”

Lucian laughed gently; all these people had become indifferent to him; he could no longer feel savage indignation at their little hypocrisies and malignancies.  Their voices uttering calumny, and morality, and futility had become like the thin shrill angry note of a gnat on a summer evening; he had his own thoughts and his own life, and he passed on without heeding.

“You come down to Caermaen pretty often, don’t you?” said the doctor.  “I’ve seen you two or three times in the last fortnight.”

“Yes, I enjoy the walk.”

“Well, look me up whenever you like, you know.  I am often in just at this time, and a chat with a human being isn’t bad, now and then.  It’s a change for me; I’m often afraid I shall lose my patients.”

The doctor had the weakness of these terrible puns, dragged headlong into the conversation.  He sometimes exhibited them before Mrs. Gervase, who would smile in a faint and dignified manner, and say: 

“Ah, I see.  Very amusing indeed.  We had an old coachmen once who was very clever, I believe, at that sort of thing, but Mr. Gervase was obliged to send him away, the laughter of the other domestics was so very boisterous.”

Lucian laughed, not boisterously, but good-humouredly, at the doctor’s joke.  He liked Burrows, feeling that he was a man and not an automatic gabbling machine.

“You look a little pulled down,” said the doctor, when Lucian rose to go.  “No, you don’t want my medicine.  Plenty of beef and beer will do you more good than drugs.  I daresay it’s the hot weather that has thinned you a bit.  Oh, you’ll be all right again in a month.”

As Lucian strolled out of the town on his way home, he passed a small crowd of urchins assembled at the corner of an orchard.  They were enjoying themselves immensely.  The “healthy” boy, the same whom he had seen some weeks ago operating on a cat, seemed to have recognized his selfishness in keeping his amusements to himself.  He had found a poor lost puppy, a little creature with bright pitiful eyes, almost human in their fond, friendly gaze.  It was not a well-bred little dog; it was certainly not that famous puppy “by Vick out of Wasp”; it had rough hair and a foolish long tail which it wagged beseechingly, at once deprecating severity and asking kindness.  The poor animal had evidently been used to gentle treatment; it would look up in a boy’s face, and give a leap, fawning on him, and then bark in a small doubtful voice, and cower a moment on the ground, astonished perhaps at the strangeness, the bustle and animation.  The boys were beside themselves with eagerness; there was quite a babble of voices, arguing, discussing, suggesting.  Each one had a plan of his own which he brought before the leader, a stout and sturdy youth.