aved a lady artist, who,
before he had been in Hampstead a week, had implored him to pose for a
painting of early Scandinavian classicism. He wore a Vandyke beard--not
because he liked it, but to avoid the casualties of his native
clumsiness, which made shaving as farcical as Heidelberg duelling--and
permitted its amber waves to roam caressingly close to his chin with a
negligence that was the more graceful because unstudied.

At first, when it became known that young Dr Danby intended stepping
into his father's practice, Hampstead resented it. Cabinet Councils of
"tabbies," assembling over their postprandial Bohea, declared they would
none of him. A retired Army doctor, forsooth! What would become of their
nervous ailments, their specially feminine disorders? If they had the
finger-ache, he would be bound to suggest amputation; if liver or
neuralgia, he would insist on active employment--those were the only
formulae known to regimental sawbones, poor benighted things!

But when he came, when it saw the benign blue eyes and lordly physique
of the new practitioner, the feline chorus changed its note, while
neuralgia, _migraine_, and other indefinite and not unbecoming disorders
became quite epidemical in his neighbourhood. Only a few daring persons
ventured to harbour opinions in opposition to the _vox populi_, and
those speedily argued themselves ignorant or prejudiced, or both.

There existed perhaps but one person of his acquaintance who was
absolutely indifferent to the impression created in his new
surroundings--the one and only person for whose goodwill Ralph Danby had
ever cared. He had known her at Gibraltar, a laughing, rosy bride,
brought out by the senior Major, a man almost double her years. But that
seemed ages ago. The Major had been gathered to his fathers, and Mrs
Cameron, with her baby girl, to the great regret of the regiment, had
returned to the vicinity, if not to the care, of her parents in Maida
Vale.

It was this departure, though it would have surprised him had he been
told so, that inspired Ralph Danby with the notion that Army doctoring
was a bore. He came to the conclusion that real work was all he wanted.
What a field was open in metropolitan life with its suffering and pain
for a man's labours--a man who was otherwise good for nothing! And then
the reward--the smiles of the relieved--that existed always, when other
satisfaction failed.

He realised he was down on his luck, but diagnosed