"_I_ don't know," said the Doctor. "He's an ordinary sort of lout--
Skelmersdale is his name. But everybody about here believes it
like Bible truth."

I reverted presently to the topic.

"I know nothing about it," said the Doctor, "and I don't WANT to know.
I attended him for a broken finger--Married and Single cricket match--
and that's when I struck the nonsense. That's all. But it shows you
the sort of stuff I have to deal with, anyhow, eh? Nice to get
modern sanitary ideas into a people like this!"

"Very," I said in a mildly sympathetic tone, and he went on to tell
me about that business of the Bonham drain. Things of that kind,
I observe, are apt to weigh on the minds of Medical Officers of Health.
I was as sympathetic as I knew how, and when he called the Bonham
people "asses," I said they were "thundering asses," but even that
did not allay him.

Afterwards, later in the summer, an urgent desire to seclude myself,
while finishing my chapter on Spiritual Pathology--it was really,
I believe, stiffer to write than it is to read--took me to Bignor.
I lodged at a farmhouse, and presently found myself outside that
little general shop again, in search of tobacco. "Skelmersdale,"
said I to myself at the sight of it, and went in.

I was served by a short, but shapely, young man, with a fair downy
complexion, good, small teeth, blue eyes, and a languid manner.
I scrutinised him curiously. Except for a touch of melancholy