Page:The Adventure at Heath Crest.pdf/1

Rh 'M sure my husband would prefer you not to cycle much, Dr. Wilkinson. It's quite true you are in the country as soon as you get over the Heath, and out there, of course, it doesn't matter so much; but the Hampstead patients are all carriage people, and I know they wouldn't like their doctor to call on a bicycle."

"Oh, I quite understand the point, Mrs. Walland," I replied. "I only mentioned it with the idea of getting a little exercise when I went out to Finchley, and so on."

"I am confident my husband's interests will be safe in your hands," said the lady majestically. "With a high-class practice like this one cannot be too circumspect; there is so much jealousy among the successful practitioners."

Dr. Walland was attending the International Medical Congress at Vienna. He had not impressed me as being an ardent scientist, but then, as everybody knows, these gatherings are only a species of superior picnics, and Vienna, too, is the gayest capital in the world. Poor man! A very short stay in the house enlightened me as to his motives. Mrs. Walland early remarked that it was only her dread of the Channel, and her fear of what might befall the household in her absence, that had prevented her accompanying her husband; and after but a very few hours of her society I felt sure that the Congress had commended itself to Walland by the distance it put between them. But the solid fee I was earning by the charge of an equally solid practice was some compensation for all I had to suffer in Mrs. Walland's society.

I may remark that I had had a not unsuccessful career at the hospital. As soon as I was qualified I had filled the usual staff appointments of house-surgeon and house-physician, which, at a hospital like Bart.'s, it is no small honour to have held; but when my two years of office were finished, I found that my troubles were only beginning. There were no more scholarships open to me, even if I could have afforded the time to work up for them; my mother's income was sufficient for herself alone, and I steadily set my face against her repeated offer to realise a portion of her small capital for me to buy a practice with. As to this, there is no more speculative investment than the purchase of a practice, and I should never have felt comfortable had any portion of my mother's income depended upon my success or failure, especially as I had had so little experience of private practice—little more, indeed, than was derived from sitting in the consulting room of my old friend, Nosbury, on an occasional evening when he went courting, and either repeating his prescriptions, or staving off those patients who consented to see me with a "placebo" calculated to last them until the day after to-morrow. So, in default of anything more