‘A shame to trouble me!’ This was the sort of shame which Dr Fillgrave did not at all comprehend.  ’A shame to trouble me!  Why Lady Scatcherd—­’

Lady Scatcherd saw that she had nothing for it but to make the whole matter intelligible.  Moreover, seeing that she appreciated more thoroughly the smallness of Dr Fillgrave’s person more thoroughly than she did the peculiar greatness of his demeanour, she began to be a shade less afraid of him than she had thought she should have been.

’Yes, Dr Fillgrave; you see, when a man like he gets well, he can’t abide the idea of doctors:  now, yesterday, he was all for sending for you; but to-day he comes to hisself, and don’t seem to want no doctor at all.’

Then did Dr Fillgrave seem to grow out of his boots, so suddenly did he take upon himself sundry modes of expansive attitude;—­to grow out of his boots and to swell upwards, till his angry eyes almost looked down on Lady Scatcherd, and each erect hair bristled up towards the heavens.

’This is very singular, very singular, Lady Scatcherd; very singular indeed; very singular; quite unusual.  I have come here from Barchester, at some considerable inconvenience, at some very considerable inconvenience, I may say, to my regular patients; and—­and—­and—­I don’t know that anything so very singular ever occurred to me before.’  And then Dr Fillgrave, with a compression of his lips which almost made the poor woman sink into the ground, moved towards the door.

Then Lady Scatcherd bethought of her great panacea.  ’It isn’t about the money, you know, doctor,’ said she; ’of course Sir Roger don’t expect you to come here with post-horses for nothing.’  In this, by the by, Lady Scatcherd did not stick quite close to veracity, for Sir Roger, had he known it, would by no means have assented to any payment; and the note which her ladyship held in her hand was taken from her own private purse.  ‘It ain’t about the money, doctor;’ and then she tendered the bank-note, which she thought would immediately make all things smooth.

Now Dr Fillgrave dearly loved a five-pound fee.  What physician is so unnatural as not to love it?  He dearly loved a five-pound fee; but he loved his dignity better.  He was angry also; and like all angry men, he loved his grievance.  He felt that he had been badly treated; but if he took the money he would throw away his right to indulge in any such feeling.  At that moment his outraged dignity and cherished anger were worth more than a five-pound note.  He looked at it with wishful but still averted eyes, and then sternly refused the tender.

‘No, madam,’ said he; ‘no, no;’ and with his right hand raised with his eye-glasses in it, he motioned away the tempting paper.  ’No; I should have been happy to have given Sir Roger the benefit of any medical skill I may have, seeing that I was specially called in—­’

‘But, doctor; if the man’s well, you know—­’