“There he is!  There’s the doctor!” cried Mrs. Wedmore, with a beaming nod.  Her husband sat up in his chair, and the troubled frown which he had worn all the evening grew a little deeper.

“I should like you, my dear, to leave us together this evening,” said he.

Mrs. Wedmore jumped up at once, gathering her balls of wool and big knitting-needles together with one quick sweep of the arm.

“All right, dear,” said she, with another nod, giving him an anxious look.

Mr. Wedmore perceived the look and smiled.  He stretched out his hand to lay it gently on his wife’s arm as she passed him.

“Nothing about me.  Nothing for you to be alarmed about,” said he.

Mrs. Wedmore hesitated a moment.  She had her suspicions, and she would dearly have liked to know more.  But she was the best trained of wives; and after a moment’s pause, seeing that she was to hear nothing further, she said, good-humoredly:  “All right, dear,” and left the room, just in time to shake hands with Doctor Haselden as she went out.

Now, while the host found it impossible to shake off the signs of his old calling, the doctor was a man who had never been able to assume them.  From head to foot there was no trace of the doctor in his appearance; he looked all over what at heart he was—­the burly, good-humored, home-loving, land-loving country gentleman, who looked upon Great Datton, where his home was, as the pivot of the world.

However he was dressed, he always looked shabby, and he could never have been mistaken for anything but an English gentleman.

He shook hands with Mr. Wedmore, with a smile.  These poor Londoners, trying to acclimatize themselves, amused him greatly.  He looked upon them much as the Londoner looks upon the Polish Jew immigrants—­with pity, a little jealousy, and no little scorn.

“Where’s Carlo?” asked he.

“Oh, Carlo was a nuisance, so I’ve sent him to the stable,” said Mr. Wedmore, with the slightly colder manner which he instantly assumed if any grievance of his, however small, was touched upon.

Carlo was a young retriever, which Mr. Wedmore, in the stern belief that it was the proper thing in a country house, had encouraged about the house until his habits of getting between everybody’s legs and helping himself to the contents of everybody’s plate had so roused the ire of the rest of the household that Mr. Wedmore had had to give way to the universal prejudice against him.

The doctor shook his head.  Lack of capacity for managing a dog was just what one might have expected from these new-comers.

Mr. Wedmore turned his chair to face that of the doctor, and spoke in the sharp, incisive tones of a man who has serious business on hand.

“I’ve been hoping you would drop in every night for the last fortnight,” said he, “and as you didn’t come, I was at last obliged to send for you.  I have a very important matter to consult you about.  You’ve brought your pipe?” The doctor produced it from his pocket.  “Well, fill it, and listen.  It’s about young Horne—­Dudley Horne—­that I want to speak to you, to consult you, in fact.”