Dr Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, and being at this period about thirty.  During those seven years his skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year.  He was also assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of which attested his respectability and general proficiency.  They, moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a successful professional man.  Whereas old Dr Gruffen, of whom but few people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing income.  Now this was hard upon Dr Crofts—­unless there was existing some such well-understood arrangement as that above named.

He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that time to the present day.  Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs Dale counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most trusted and admired.  And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew him well.  He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale.  In mental power I doubt whether he was superior to John Eames;—­to John Eames, such as he might become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether passed away.  But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them.  And there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without which Mrs Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking which she had for him.  But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society.  Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, than he could with a single companion.  Bernard Dale was never bright; and as for Johnny Eames—­; but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames had not yet shown to the world what his character might be.

It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical advice on behalf of his friend Mrs Dale.  She had then been ill for a long period—­some two or three months, and Dr Crofts had been frequent in his visits at Allington.  At that time he became very intimate with Mrs Dale’s daughters, and especially so with the eldest.  Young unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from homes in which there are young ladies.  I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors ought to