“No, my dear boy, no, I have an assistant already,” and he sighed, this time with genuine emotion.  “If you come here you will have to stand upon your own legs.”

“Quite so, Sir John, but I shall still hope for a few crumbs from the master’s table.”

“Yes, yes, Therne, in anything of that sort you may rely upon me,” and he bowed me out with an effusive smile.

“——­ to poison the crumbs,” I thought to myself, for I was never for one moment deceived as to this man’s character.

A fortnight later Emma and I came to Dunchester and took up our abode in a quaint red-brick house of the Queen Anne period, which we hired for a not extravagant rent of 80 pounds a year.  Although the position of this house was not fashionable, nothing could have been more suitable from a doctor’s point of view, as it stood in a little street near the market-place and absolutely in the centre of the city.  Moreover, it had two beautiful reception chambers on the ground floor, oak-panelled, and with carved Adam’s mantelpieces, which made excellent waiting-rooms for patients.  Some time passed, however, and our thousand pounds, in which the expense of furnishing had made a considerable hole, was melting rapidly before those rooms were put to a practical use.  Both I and my wife did all that we could to get practice.  We called upon people who had been friends of my father and grandfather; we attended missionary and other meetings of a non-political character; regardless of expense we went so far as to ask old ladies to tea.

They came, they drank the tea and inspected the new furniture; one of them even desired to see my instruments and when, fearing to give offence, I complied and produced them, she remarked that they were not nearly so nice as dear Sir John’s, which had ivory handles.  Cheerfully would I have shown her that if the handles were inferior the steel was quite serviceable, but I swallowed my wrath and solemnly explained that it was not medical etiquette for a young doctor to use ivory.

Beginning to despair, I applied for one or two minor appointments in answer to advertisements inserted by the Board of Guardians and other public bodies.  In each case was I not only unsuccessful, but men equally unknown, though with a greatly inferior college and hospital record, were chosen over my head.  At length, suspecting that I was not being fairly dealt by, I made inquiries to discover that at the bottom of all this ill success was none other than Sir John Bell.  It appeared that in several instances, by the shrugs of his thick shoulders and shakes of his ponderous head, he had prevented my being employed.  Indeed, in the case of the public bodies, with all of which he had authority either as an official or as an honorary adviser, he had directly vetoed my appointment by the oracular announcement that, after ample inquiry among medical friends in London, he had satisfied himself that I was not a suitable person for the post.