mourous smile; a curtly confident way of speaking;
resolution, independence, power, expressed all over him from head to
foot--there is the portrait of the man who held in his hands (if Nugent
was to be trusted) the restoration of Lucilla's sight!

The English oculist was as unlike his German colleague as it is possible
for one human being to be to another.

Mr. Sebright was slim and spare, and scrupulously (painfully) clean and
neat. His smooth light hair was carefully parted; his well-shaved face
exhibited two little crisp morsels of whisker about two inches long, and
no hair more. His decent black clothes were perfectly made; he wore no
ornaments, not even a watch-chain; he moved deliberately, he spoke
gravely and quietly; disciplined attention looked coldly at you out of
his light grey eyes; and said, Here I am if you want me, in every
movement of his thin finely-cut lips. A thoroughly capable man, beyond
all doubt--but defend me from accidentally sitting next to him at dinner,
or traveling with him for my only companion on a long journey!

I received these distinguished persons with my best grace. Herr Grosse
complimented me in return on my illustrious name, and shook hands. Mr.
Sebright said it was a beautiful day, and bowed. The German, the moment
he was at liberty to look about him, looked at the luncheon-table. The
Englishman looked out of window.

"Will you take some refreshment, gentlemen?"

Herr Grosse nodded his shock head in high approval. His wild eyes glared
greedily at the Mayonnaise through his prodigious spectacles. "Aha! I
like that," said the illustrious surgeon, pointing at the dish with his
ringed forefinger. "You know how to make him--you make him with creams.
Is he chickens or lobsters? I like lobsters best, but chickens is goot
too. The garnish is lofely--anchovy, olive, beetroots; brown, green, red,
on a fat white sauce! This I call a heavenly dish. He is nice-cool in two
different ways; nice-cool, to the eye, nice-cool to the taste! Soh! we
will break into his inside. Madame Pratolungo, you shall begin. Here goes
for the liver-wings!"

In this extraordinary English--turning words in the singular into words
in the plural, and banishing from the British vocabulary the copulative
conjunction "and"--Herr Grosse announced his readiness to sit down to
lunch. He was politely recalled from the Mayonnaise to the patient by his
discreet English colleague.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Sebright.