A Physiologist's Wife

Professor Ainslie Grey had not come down to
breakfast at the usual hour. The presentation
chiming-clock which stood between the terra-cotta
busts of Claude Bernard and of John Hunter upon the
dining-room mantelpiece had rung out the half-hour
and the three-quarters. Now its golden hand was
verging upon the nine, and yet there were no signs of
the master of the house.

It was an unprecedented occurrence. During the
twelve years that she had kept house for him, his
youngest sister had never known him a second behind
his time. She sat now in front of the high silver
coffee-pot, uncertain whether to order the gong to be
resounded or to wait on in silence. Either course
might be a mistake. Her brother was not a man who
permitted mistakes.

Miss Ainslie Grey was rather above the middle
height, thin, with peering, puckered eyes, and the
rounded shoulders which mark the bookish woman. Her
face was long and spare, flecked with
colour above the cheek-bones, with a reasonable,
thoughtful forehead, and a dash of absolute obstinacy
in her thin lips and prominent chin. Snow white
cuffs and collar, with a plain dark dress, cut with
almost Quaker-like simplicity, bespoke the primness
of her taste. An ebony cross hung over her flattened
chest. She sat very upright in her chair, listening
with raised eyebrows, and swinging her eye-glasses
backwards and forwards with a nervous gesture which
was peculiar to her.

Suddenly she gave a sharp, satisfied jerk of the
head, and began to pour out the coffee. From outside
there came the dull thudding sound of heavy feet upon
thick carpet. The door swung open, and the Professor
entered with a quick, nervous step. He nodded to his
sister, and seating himself at the other side of the
table, began to open the small pile of letters which
lay beside his plate.

Professor Ainslie Grey was at that time forty-
three years of age--nearly twelve years older than
his sister. His career had been a brilliant one. At
Edinburgh, at Cambridge, and at Vienna he had laid
the foundations of his great reputation, both in
physiology and in zoology.

His pamphlet, On the Mesoblastic Origin of
Excitomotor Nerve Roots, had won him his fellowship
of the Royal Society; and his researches, Upon
the Nature of Bathybius, with some Remarks upon
Lithococci, had been translated into at least three
European languages. He had been referred to by one
of the greatest living authorities as being the very
type and embodiment of all that was best in modern
science. No wonder, then, that when the commercial
city of Birchespool decided to create a medical
school, they were only too glad to confer the chair
of physiology