no fixed wardrobe for his clothes.  He had a few bottles of good wine in his cellar, and occasionally asked a brother bachelor to take a chop with him; but beyond this he had touched very little on the cares of housekeeping.  A slop-bowl full of strong tea, together with bread, and butter, and eggs, was produced for him in the morning, and he expected that at whatever hour he might arrive in the evening, some food should be presented to him wherewith to satisfy the cravings of nature; if, in addition to this, he had another slop-bowl of tea in the evening, he got all that he ever required, or all, at least, that he ever demanded.

But when Mary came, or rather, when she was about to come, things were altogether changed at the doctor’s.  People had hitherto wondered—­and especially Mrs Umbleby—­how a gentleman like Dr Thorne could continue to live in so slovenly a manner; and how people again wondered, and again especially Mrs Umbleby, how the doctor could possibly think it necessary to put such a lot of furniture into a house because a little chit of a girl of twelve years was coming to live with him.

Mrs Umbleby had great scope for her wonder.  The doctor made a thorough revolution in his household, and furnished his house from the ground to the roof completely.  He painted—­for the first time since the commencement of his tenancy—­he papered, he carpeted, as though a Mrs Thorne with a good fortune were coming home to-morrow; and all for a girl of twelve years old.  ‘And now,’ said Mrs Umbleby, to her friend Miss Gushing, ‘how did he find out what to buy?’ as though the doctor had been brought up like a wild beast, ignorant of the nature of tables and chairs, and with no more developed ideas of drawing-room drapery than an hippopotamus.

To the utter amazement of Mrs Umbleby and Miss Gushing, the doctor did it very well.  He said nothing about it to any one—­he never did say much about such things—­but he furnished his house well and discreetly; and when Mary Thorne came home from her school at Bath, to which she had been taken some six years previously, she found herself called upon to be the presiding genius of a perfect paradise.

It has been said that the doctor had managed to endear himself to the new squire before the old squire’s death, and that, therefore, the change at Greshamsbury had had no professional ill effects upon him.  Such was the case at the time; but, nevertheless, all did not go smoothly in the Greshamsbury medical department.  There was six or seven years’ difference in age between Mr Gresham and the doctor, and moreover, Mr Gresham was young for his age, and the doctor old; but, nevertheless, there was a very close attachment between them early in life.  This was never thoroughly sundered, and, backed by this the doctor did maintain himself for some years before the artillery of Lady Arabella’s artillery.  But drops falling, if they fall constantly, will bore through a stone.