Page:How I Met a Very Ignorant Practitioner.pdf/6

Rh busy, negotiations for sale in active progress, only a small sum dividing him from a possible purchaser, quite impossible to return, and so on; the gist of it all was, could I wait another week? As I had nothing else in view, and one berth was as good as another, I wrote and consented to stay on.

I had just sent the boy off to the post when Mrs. Walsham told me a gentleman, she thought a new patient, was asking for the doctor, and she presently introduced a tall man, with features of a rather foreign cast, but refined and intellectual withal. He seemed much tanned by exposure, and the lower part of his face was practically hidden by a close black beard. There was an odd reminder about him of someone else—just whom I was unable at the moment to decide.

"Dr. Inns?" he inquired, as he sat down, adding, when I explained matters, "Ah! I thought there must be some mistake, although it's a good many years since I saw him."

"Do you wish to see him professionally?"

"Oh, no, thanks. I knew him in the South American line, and, being in the neighbourhood, I thought I would look him up. Is he as stout as ever?"

"Well, I never met him till a few day ago, but he is certainly rather stout."

"Does he grow his beard now? We were always chaffing him about the way he used to cut himself in shaving, and he used to tell a yarn, I remember, about the number of razors he blunted."

"Yes," I said, "he grows his beard. As to yarns, he has the finest assortment I ever heard."

"Ah, a thorough good fellow. When do you expect him back?"

"In a week for certain, I should say. Who shall I tell him called?"

"Oh, never mind, I want to surprise him. He always enjoyed a practical joke. I can easily run over, as I'm staying at Treacham for the present."

The stranger hardly looked the sort of man one would expect to indulge in practical jokes, and when he had taken his leave I could not help wondering how a man of such obvious refinement could have any serious liking for one of the stamp of Inns, although no doubt the monotony of shipboard has accounted for queerer friendships; for my own part, I could have wished his stay longer, so much was I beginning to feel the dead-and-aliveness of the place.

Ever since our meeting I had been thinking pretty constantly of Inns's sister, and as the third week progressed I told myself each morning that that day I should see her. Shall I confess it? The idea had weighed more than a little with me when I agreed to stay on the extra week. Each day I rose hopefully, and each night I went to bed and lay awake inventing all kinds of reasons for my disappointment. They might be weeks perhaps before they came back; or if they came they might just inquire at the door if Inns had returned and go away again; or (worse still!) Mrs. Inns might come alone. All this I told myself, and in the telling I wished I had a month longer to stay, but the last day came round so quickly that the week seemed as if it had been half its proper length.

Inns was delightfully vague in all his arrangements, and I was quite in the dark as to what time of the day he would return. As it was no good leaving things till the last moment, I spent a depressing afternoon in packing up, and had just finished when a letter arrived in his now familiar scrawl. I opened it listlessly, and then, as I read, my heart gave a bound. He was still busy, quite unable to return. Could I give him another week? And then there was a postscript. Had his mother and sister been again? "A week?" I thought. He could have a month, a year, and I would never ask a fee. How I danced round the room! How I whistled and sang, and kicked the portmanteau under the bed, and dragged it out again, and tumbled my carefully-folded things upon the floor! And then I remembered I must tell Mrs. Walsham the glorious news, and I skipped downstairs and nearly into the arms of a man who was talking to her in the little passage. It was Inns's friend, the dark-bearded man.

"Look here!" he demanded. "I thought you told me Dr. Inns would be home today?"

I should have resented the tone and the manner had I felt only a degree less exhilarated; as it was, I answered with equal stiffness.

"So I believed at the time I saw you."

"Have you got the least idea when he will be back?" He glanced as he spoke at the open letter I held. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him, but I checked myself.