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WONDER, my trusted friend, if you remember that September day when you, after a consultation in Abingdon Road, lunched at my house, and we opened that bottle of most excellent '64 port which old Glynn in Campden Hill had sent me?

That same evening you, in your ignorance, would insist upon seeing me off upon a holiday from Charing Cross, though your presence on the platform cost me a first-class ticket to Paris. I tried to induce you not to come, for I had no intention whatever of going to the Continent. But you were inexorable, so I was compelled to buy a ticket and travel as far as Dover, just because I wished it to be thought that I had gone to Italy.

I had left young Saunderson in charge as locum tenens. You will remember him—a tall, dark, thin fellow, who drifted up and down