"Of course we have," said Miss Quincey. She said it irritably, but
everybody knows that a little temper is the surest symptom of returning
health. "What should he come for?"

"To run up his little bill, my dear. You don't imagine he comes for the
pleasure of seeing _you_?"

"I never imagine anything," said the little arithmetic teacher with some
truth.

But they had by no means seen the last of him. If the Old Lady's theory
was correct, Cautley must have been the most grossly avaricious of young
men. The length of his visits was infamous, their frequency appalling. He
kept on coming long after Miss Quincey was officially and obviously well;
and on the most trivial, the most ridiculous pretexts. It was "just to
see how she was getting on," or "because he happened to be passing," or
"to bring that book he told her about." He had prescribed a course of
light literature for Miss Quincey and seemed to think it necessary to
supply his own drugs. To be sure he brought a great many medicines that
you cannot get made up at the chemist's, insight, understanding,
sympathy, the tonic of his own virile youth; and Heaven only knows if
these things were not the most expensive.

All the time Miss Quincey was trying to keep up with the new standard
imposed on the staff. Hitherto she had laboured under obvious
disadvantages; now, in her leisurely convalescence, sated as she was with
time, she wallowed openly and wantonly in General Culture. And it seemed
that the doctor had gone in for General Culture too. He could talk to her
for ever about Shakespeare, Tennyson and Browning. Miss Quincey was