Vavasour and the children," said Vavasour, looking up at last: but with
an expression of anger which astonished both Valencia and Campbell.

Campbell thought that he was too proud to allow rank as a gentleman to a
country doctor; and despised him from that moment, though, as it
happened, unjustly. But he answered quietly,--

"I assure you, that whatever some country practitioners may be, the
average of them, as far as I have seen, are cleverer men, and even of
higher tone than their neighbours; and Thurnall is beyond the average:
he is a man of the world,--even too much of one,--and a man of science;
and I fairly confess that, what with his wit, his _savoir vivre_, and
his genial good temper, I have quite fallen in love with him in a single
evening; we began last night on the microscope, and ended on all heaven
and earth."

"How I should like to make a third!"

"My dear Queen Whims would hear a good deal of sober sense, then; at
least on one side: but I shall not ask her: for Mr. Thurnall and I have
our deep secrets together."

So spoke the Major, in the simple wish to exalt Tom in a quarter where
he hoped to get him practice; and his "secret" was a mere jest,
unnecessary, perhaps, as he thought afterwards, to pass off Tom's want
of orthodoxy.

"I was a babbler then," said he to himself the next moment; "how much
better to have simply held my tongue!"