picturesque. The Swiss chalet style has not yet come to Coombe, so the
architecture, though plain, is not productive of nightmare. The roads
are like country roads, soft and yellowish; green grass grows along the
sides of many of them, and board sidewalks are still to be found,
springy and easy to the tread. There is a main street with macadamised
roadway and stone pavements, real flat stone, for they were laid before
the appearance of the all-conquering cement. There is a postoffice with
a tower and a clock, a courthouse with a fountain and a cannon, a park
with a bandstand and a baseball diamond, a townhall with a belfry and no
bell, an exhaustive array of churches, the Imperial Hotel, and the
market. We mention the market last (as we were taught at school) because
on account of its importance it ought to come first.

When Dr. Callandar, having been efficiently valeted by Bubble, set out
to pay his first professional call, he drew in deep breaths of the
pleasant air with a feeling of well-being to which he had long been a
stranger. He had slept. In spite of the room, in spite of the chocolate
cake, in spite of the pie, he had slept. And that alone was enough to
make the whole world over. It was still hot but with a heat different
from the heat of yesterday. A little shower had fallen during the night.
There was a sense of the north in the air, a light freshness, very
invigorating. He liked the quiet shaded streets; the cannon by the
courthouse amused him; the number of church steeples left him amazed. He
felt as if he had stumbled into a dream-town and must walk carefully
lest he stumble out.

Bubble had given him very complete directions, indeed so minute were
they that we will omit them lest some day you find the way yourself and
drop in on Mrs. Sykes when she is not expecting company. But Dr.
Callandar in his amused absorption had forgotten that he was going to