father. His mother has married again. The second husband is a lazy,
harmless old fellow, named Gallilee; possessed of one small
attraction--fifty thousand pounds, grubbed up in trade. There are two
little daughters, by the second marriage. With such a stepfather as I
have described, and, between ourselves, with a mother who has rather
more than her fair share of the jealous, envious, and money-loving
propensities of humanity, my friend Ovid is not diverted by family
influences from the close pursuit of his profession. You will tell me,
he may marry. Well! if he gets a good wife she will be a circumstance
in his favour. But, so far as I know, he is not that sort of man.
Cooler, a deal cooler, with women than I am--though I am old enough to
be his father. Let us get back to his professional prospects. You heard
him ask me about a patient?"

"Yes."

"Very good. Death was knocking hard at that patient's door, when I
called Ovid into consultation with myself and with two other doctors
who differed with me. It was one of the very rare cases in which the
old practice of bleeding was, to my mind, the only treatment to pursue.
I never told him that this was the point in dispute between me and the
other men--and they said nothing, on their side, at my express request.
He took his time to examine and think; and he saw the chance of saving
the patient by venturing on the use of the lancet as plainly as I
did--with my forty years' experience to teach me! A young man with that
capacity for discovering the remote cause of disease, and with that
superiority to the trammels of routine in applying the treatment, has
no common medical career before him. His holiday will set his health
right in next to no time. I see nothing in his way, at present--not
even a woman! But," said Sir Richard, with the explanatory wink of one