Yes, yes,' repeated the doctor, and as Mrs Clinton went on
complacently, he frowned and drummed his fingers on the table and looked
to the right and left. 'When is the man coming in?' he asked
impatiently.

And at last he could not contain himself.

'If you don't mind, Mrs Clinton, I should like to talk to your doctor
alone about the case. You can wait in the next room.'

'I'm sure I don't wish to intrude,' said Mrs Clinton, bridling up, and
she rose in a dignified manner from her chair. She thought his manners
were distinctly queer. 'But, of course,' she said to a friend
afterwards, 'he's a genius, there's no mistaking it, and people like
that are always very eccentric.'

'What an insufferable woman!' he began, when the lady had retired,
talking very rapidly, only stopping to take an occasional breath. 'I
thought she was going on all night. She's enough to drive the man mad.
One couldn't get a word in edgeways. Why on earth doesn't this man come?
Just like these people, they don't think that my time's valuable. I
expect she drinks. Shocking, you know, these women, how they drink!' And
still talking, he looked at his watch for the eighth time in ten
minutes.

'Well, my man,' he said, as Mr Clinton at last came in, 'what are you
complaining of?... One moment,' he added, as Mr Clinton was about to
reply. He opened his notebook and took out a stylographic pen. 'Now, I'm
ready for you. What are you complaining of?'

'I'm complaining that the world is out of joint,' answered Mr Clinton,
with a smile.

The specialist raised his eyebrows and significantly looked at the
family doctor.

'It's astonishing how much you can get by a well-directed question,' he
said to him, taking no notice of Mr Clinton. 'Some people go floundering
about for hours, but, you see, by one question I get on the track.'
Turning to the patient again, he said, 'Ah! and do you see things?'

'Certainly; I see you.'

'I don't mean that,' impatiently said the specialist. 'Distinctly
stupid, you know,' he added to his colleague. 'I mean, do you see things
that other people don't see?'

'Alas! yes; I see Folly stalking abroad on a 'obby 'orse.'

'Do you really? Anything else?' said the doctor, making a note of the
fact.

'I see Wickedness and Vice beating the land with their wings.'

'_Sees things beating with their wings_,' wrote down the doctor.

'I see misery and un'appiness everywhere.'

'Indeed!' said the doctor. '_Has delusions._ Do y