It was in visiting some of the tenants of these cottages that in an evil hour Jane first met Dr. Merchison, a young man of about thirty, who held some parish appointment which placed the sick of this district under his charge.  Ernest Merchison was a raw-boned, muscular and rather formidable-looking person, of Scotch descent, with strongly-marked features, deep-set eyes, and very long arms.  A man of few words, when he did speak his language was direct to the verge of brusqueness, but his record as a medical man was good and even distinguished, and already he had won the reputation of being the best surgeon in Dunchester.  This was the individual who was selected by my daughter Jane to receive the affections which she had refused to some of the most polished and admired men in England, and, as I believe, largely for the reason that, instead of bowing and sighing about after her, he treated her with a rudeness which was almost brutal.

In one of these new model houses lived some people of the name of Smith.  Mr. Smith was a compositor, and Mrs. Smith, nee Samuels, was none other than that very little girl whom, together with her brother, who died, I had once treated for erysipelas resulting from vaccination.  In a way I felt grateful to her, for that case was the beginning of my real success in life, and for this reason, out of several applicants, the new model house was let to her husband as soon as it was ready for occupation.

Could I have foreseen the results which were to flow from an act of kindness, and that as this family had indirectly been the cause of my triumph so they were in turn to be the cause of my ruin, I would have destroyed the whole street with dynamite before I allowed them to set foot in it.  However, they came, bringing with them two children, a little girl of four, to whom Jane took a great fancy, and a baby of eighteen months.

In due course these children caught the whooping-cough, and Jane visited them, taking with her some delicacies as a present.  While she was there Dr. Merchison arrived in his capacity of parish doctor, and, beyond a curt bow taking no notice of Jane, began his examination, for this was his first visit to the family.  Presently his eye fell upon a box of sweets.

“What’s that?” he asked sharply.

“It’s a present that Miss Therne here has brought for Tottie,” answered the mother.

“Then Tottie mustn’t eat them till she is well.  Sugar is bad for whooping-cough, though, of course, a young lady couldn’t be expected to know that,” he added in a voice of gruff apology, then went on quickly, glancing at the little girl’s arm, “No marks, I see.  Conscientious Objector?  Or only lazy?”

Then Mrs. Smith fired up and poured out her own sad history and that of her poor little brother who died, baring her scarred arm in proof of it.

“And so,” she finished, “though I do not remember much about it myself, I do remember my mother’s dying words, which were ’to mind what the doctor had told her, and never to have any child of mine vaccinated, no, not if they crawled on their knees to ask it of me.’”