about your finer feelings." He glanced anxiously at Mr. Saffron. "All
right now, aren't you, sir?" he inquired.

Mr. Saffron drank his glass of wine. "I am perhaps too sensitive to
any kind of inattention; but it's not wholly unnatural in my
position, Hector."

"We both desire to be attentive and respectful, sir. Don't we, Hooper?"

"Oh my, yes!" grinned the Sergeant, showing his very ugly teeth. "It's
only owing that we 'aven't quite been brought up in royal palaces."




CHAPTER IV

PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE


Dr. Irechester was a man of considerable attainments and an active,
though not very persevering, intellect. He was widely read both in
professional and general literature, but had shrunk from the arduous path
of specialization. And he shrank even more from the drudgery of his
calling. He had private means, inherited in middle life; his wife had a
respectable portion; there was, then, nothing in his circumstances to
thwart his tastes and tendencies. He had soon come to see in the late Dr.
Evans a means of relief rather than a threat of rivalry; even more easily
he slipped into the same way of regarding Mary Arkroyd, helped thereto by
a lingering feeling that, after all and in spite of all, when it came to