A False Start

"Is Dr. Horace Wilkinson at home?"

"I am he. Pray step in."

The visitor looked somewhat astonished at having
the door opened to him by the master of the house.

"I wanted to have a few words."

The doctor, a pale, nervous young man, dressed in
an ultra-professional, long black frock-coat, with a
high, white collar cutting off his dapper side-
whiskers in the centre, rubbed his hands together and
smiled. In the thick, burly man in front of him he
scented a patient, and it would be his first. His
scanty resources had begun to run somewhat low, and,
although he had his first quarter's rent safely
locked away in the right-hand drawer of his desk, it
was becoming a question with him how he should meet
the current expenses of his very simple housekeeping.
He bowed, therefore, waved his visitor in, closed the
hall door in a careless fashion, as though his own
presence thereat had been a purely accidental
circumstance, and finally led the burly stranger
into his scantily furnished front room, where he
motioned him to a seat. Dr. Wilkinson planted
himself behind his desk, and, placing his finger-tips
together, he gazed with some apprehension at his
companion. What was the matter with the man? He
seemed very red in the face. Some of his old
professors would have diagnosed his case by now, and
would have electrified the patient by describing his
own symptoms before he had said a word about them.
Dr. Horace Wilkinson racked his brains for some clue,
but Nature had fashioned him as a plodder--a very
reliable plodder and nothing more. He could think of
nothing save that the visitor's watch-chain had a
very brassy appearance, with a corollary to the
effect that he would be lucky if he got half-a-crown
out of him. Still, even half-a-crown was something
in those early days of struggle.

Whilst the doctor had been running his eyes over
the stranger, the latter had been plunging his hands
into pocket after pocket of his heavy coat. The heat
of the weather, his dress, and this exercise of
pocket-rummaging had all combined to still further
redden his face, which had changed from brick to
beet, with a gloss of moisture on his brow. This
extreme ruddiness brought a clue at last to the
observant doctor. Surely it was not to be attained
without alcohol. In alcohol lay the secret of
this man's trouble. Some little delicacy was needed,
however, in showing him that he had read his case
aright--that at a glance he had penetrated to the
inmost sources of his ailments.

"It's very hot," observed the stranger, mopping
his forehead.

"Yes, it is weather which tempts one to drink
rather more beer than is good for one," answered Dr.