They lived in the house, and occupied an uncomfortable, ambiguous, or,
as Miss Browning called it with some truth, 'amphibious' position. They
had their meals with Mr. Gibson and Molly, and were felt to be terribly
in the way; Mr. Gibson not being a man who could make conversation, and
hating the duty of talking under restraint. Yet something within him
made him wince, as if his duties were not rightly performed, when, as
the cloth was drawn, the two awkward lads rose up with joyful alacrity,
gave him a nod, which was to be interpreted as a bow, knocked against
each other in their endeavours to get out of the dining-room quickly;
and then might be heard dashing along a passage which led to the
surgery, choking with half-suppressed laughter. Yet the annoyance he
felt at this dull sense of imperfectly fulfilled duties only made his
sarcasms on their inefficiency, or stupidity, or ill manners, more
bitter than before.

Beyond direct professional instruction, he did not know what to do with
the succession of pairs of young men, whose mission seemed to be to
plague their master consciously, and to plague him unconsciously. Once
or twice Mr. Gibson had declined taking a fresh pupil, in the hopes of
shaking himself free from the incubus, but his reputation as a clever
surgeon had spread so rapidly that fees which he had thought
prohibitory, were willingly paid, in order that the young man might
make a start in life, with the prestige of having been a pupil of
Gibson of Hollingford. But as Molly grew to be a little girl instead of
a child, when she was about eight years old, her father perceived the
awkwardness of her having her breakfasts and dinners so often alone
with the pupils, without his uncertain presence. To do away with this
evil, more than for the actual instruction she could give, he engaged a
respectable woman, the daughter of a shopkeeper in the town, who had
left a destitute family, to come every morning before breakfast, and to