He had, moreover, other difficulties to encounter in his professional career.  It was something in his favour that he understood his business; something that he was willing to labour at it with energy; and resolved to labour at it conscientiously.  He had also other gifts, such as conversational brilliancy, and aptitude for true good fellowship, firmness in friendship, and general honesty of disposition, which stood him in stead as he advanced in life.  But, at his first starting, much that belonged to himself personally was against him.  Let him enter what house he would, he entered it with a conviction, often expressed to himself, that he was equal as a man to the proprietor, equal as a human being to the proprietress.  To age he would allow deference, and to special recognized talent—­at least so he said; to rank also, he would pay that respect which was its clear and recognized prerogative; he would let a lord walk out of a room before him if he did not happen to forget it; in speaking to a duke he would address him as His Grace; and he would in no way assume a familiarity with bigger men than himself, allowing to the bigger man the privilege of making the first advances.  But beyond this he would admit that no man should walk the earth with his head higher than his own.

He did not talk of these things much; he offended no rank by boasts of his own equality; he did not absolutely tell the Earl de Courcy in words, that the privilege of dining at Courcy Castle was to him no greater than the privilege of dining at Courcy Parsonage; but there was that in his manner that told it.  The feeling in itself was perhaps good, and was certainly much justified by the manner in which he bore himself to those below him in rank; but there was folly in the resolution to run counter to the world’s recognized rules on such matters; and much absurdity in his mode of doing so, seeing that at heart he was a thorough Conservative.  It is hardly too much to say that he naturally hated a lord at first sight; but, nevertheless, he would have expended his means, his blood, and spirit, in fighting for the upper house of Parliament.

Such a disposition, until it was thoroughly understood, did not tend to ingratiate him with the wives of the country gentlemen among whom he had to look for practice.  And then, also, there was not much in his individual manner to recommend him to the favour of ladies.  He was brusque, authoritative, given to contradiction, rough though never dirty in his personal belongings, and inclined to indulge in a sort of quiet raillery, which sometimes was not thoroughly understood.  People did not always know whether he was laughing at them or with them; and some people were, perhaps, inclined to think that a doctor should not laugh at all when called in to act doctorially.

When he was known, indeed, when the core of the fruit had been reached, when the huge proportion of that loving trusting heart had been learned, and understood, and appreciated, when that honesty had been recognized, that manly, almost womanly tenderness had been felt, then, indeed, the doctor was acknowledged to be adequate in his profession.