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6, if a little awkwardly, as he advanced into the room.

"She wrote you, then?"

"Oh yes! I've got the letter somewhere." He felt in his pocket and failed to find it.

"Won't you sit down? "

There was no chair near the writing-table save the one upon which I sat. A further reason why I knew my predecessor here had been a writer! Dr. Kennedy had to fetch one, and I took shallow stock of him meanwhile. A tall and not ill-looking man in the late thirties or early forties, he had on the worst suit of country tweeds I had ever seen and incongruously well-made boots. Now he sprawled silently in the selected chair, and I waited for his opening. Already I was nauseated with doctors and their methods. In town I had seen everybody's favourite nostrum-dispenser, and none of them had relieved me of anything but my hardly earned cash. I mean to present a study of them one day, to get something back from what I have given. Dr. Kennedy did not accord with the black-coated London brigade, and his opening was certainly different.

"How long have you been feeling unwell?" That was what I expected, this was the common gambit. Dr. Kennedy sat a few minutes without speaking at all. Then he asked me abruptly:

"Did you know Mrs. Capel? "