It was no other than Dr. West.  He gave them each a cool kiss, walked to the fire and sat down, bidding them not smother him.  For some little while they could not get over their surprise or believe their senses.  They knew nothing of his intention to return, and had deemed him hundreds of miles away.  Question after question they showered down upon him, the result of their amazement.  He answered just as much as he chose.  He had only come home for a day or so, he said, and did not care that it should be known he was there, to be tormented with a shoal of callers.

“Where’s Mr. Jan?” asked he.

“In the surgery,” said Deborah.

“Is he by himself?”

“Yes, dear papa.  Master Cheese has just gone up to Deerham Hall, and the boy is out.”

Dr. West rose, and made his way to the surgery.  The surgery was empty.  But the light of a fire from the half-opened door, led him to Jan’s bedroom.  It was a room that would persist in remaining obstinately damp, and Jan, albeit not over careful of himself, judged it well to have an occasional fire lighted.  The room, seen by this light, looked comfortable.  The small, low, iron bed stood in the far corner; in the opposite corner the bureau, as in Dr. West’s time, the door opening to the garden (never used now) between them, at the end of the room.  The window was on the side opposite the fire, a table in the middle.  Jan was then occupied in stirring the fire into a blaze, and its cheerful light flickered on every part of the room.

“Good-evening, Mr. Jan.”

Jan turned round, poker in hand, and stared amiably.  “Law!” cried he.  “Who’d have thought it?”

The old word; the word he had learned at school—­law.  It was Jan’s favourite mode of expressing surprise still, and Lady Verner never could break him of it.  He shook hands cordially with Dr. West.

The doctor shut the door, slipping the bolt, and sat down to the fire.  Jan cleared a space on the table, which was covered with jars and glass vases, cylinders, and other apparatus, seemingly for chemical purposes, and took his seat there.

The doctor had taken a run home, “making a morning call, as it might be metaphorically observed,” he said to Jan.  Just to have a sight of home faces, and hear a little home news.  Would Mr. Jan recite to him somewhat of the latter?

Jan did so; touching upon all he could recollect.  From John Massingbird’s return to Verner’s Pride, and the consequent turning out of Mr. Verner and his wife, down to the death of Sir Rufus Hautley; not forgetting the pranks played by the “ghost,” and the foiled expedition of Mrs. Peckaby to New Jerusalem.  Some of these items of intelligence the doctor had heard before, for Jan periodically wrote to him.  The doctor looked taller, and stouter, and redder than ever, and as he leaned thoughtfully forward, and the crimson blaze played upon his face, Jan thought how like he was growing to his sister, the late Mrs. Verner.