Chapter 4 - Page 2

distinguished for science and learning, without regard to rank; and, it must be confessed, without much regard to polished manners likewise.

Mr Hall, Mr Gibson's predecessor, had always been received with friendly condescension by my lady, who had found him established as the family medical man, when first she came to the Towers on her marriage; but she never thought of interfering with his custom of taking his meals, if he needed refreshment, in the housekeeper's room, not with the housekeeper, bien entendu. The comfortable, clever, stout, and red-faced doctor would very much have preferred this, even if he had had the choice given him (which he never had) of taking his 'snack,' as he called it, with my lord and my lady, in the grand dining-room. Of course, if some great surgical gun (like Sir Astley) was brought down from London to bear on the family's health, it was due to him, as well as to the local medical attendant, to ask Mr Hall to dinner, in a formal and ceremonious manner, on which occasions Mr Hall buried his chin in voluminous folds of white muslin, put on his black knee-breeches, with bunches of ribbon at the sides, his silk stockings and buckled shoes, and otherwise made himself excessively uncomfortable in his attire, and went forth in state in a post-chaise from the 'George,' consoling himself in the private corner of his heart for the discomfort he was enduring with the idea of how well it would sound the next day in the ears of the squires whom he was in the habit of attending. 'Yesterday at dinner the earl said,' or 'the countess remarked,' or 'I was surprised to hear when I was dining at the Towers yesterday.' But somehow things had changed since Mr Gibson had become 'the doctor' par excellence at Hollingford. The Miss Brownings thought that it was because he had such an elegant figure, and 'such a distinguished manner;' Mrs Goodenough, 'because of his aristocratic connections' - 'the son of a Scotch duke, my dear, never mind on which side of the blanket' - but the fact was certain; although he might frequently ask Mrs Brown to give him something to eat in the housekeeper's room - he had no time for all the fuss and ceremony of luncheon with my lady - he was always welcome to the grandest circle of visitors in the house. He might lunch with a duke any day that he chose; given that a duke was forthcoming at the Towers. His accent was Scotch, not provincial. He had not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones; and leanness goes a great way to gentility. His complexion was sallow, and his hair black; in those days, the decade after the conclusion of the great continental war, to be sallow and black-a-vised was of itself a distinction;' he was not jovial (as my lord remarked with a sigh, but it was my lady who endorsed the invitations), sparing of his words, intelligent, and slightly sarcastic. Therefore he was perfectly presentable.

His Scotch blood (for that he was of Scotch descent there could be no