ntist had been standing near the door drinking his tea during
this conversation; and now for the first time he looked at his
housekeeper with an expression of unmitigated astonishment.

"What, in the name of all that's ridiculous, do you mean, Nancy?" he
asked impatiently. "What has my roof to do with Tom Halliday's
illness--or his death, if it came to that? And what on earth can people
have to say about it if he should die here instead of anywhere else?"

"Why, you see, sir, you being his friend, and Miss Georgy's sweetheart
that was, and him having no other doctor, folks might take it into
their heads he wasn't attended properly."

"Because I'm his friend? That's very good logic! I'll tell you what it
is, Mrs. Woolper; if any woman upon earth, except the woman who nursed
me when I was a baby, had presumed to talk to me as you have been
talking to me just this minute, I should open the door yonder and tell
her to walk out of my house. Let that serve as a hint for you, Nancy;
and don't you go out of your way a second time to advise me how I
should treat my friend and my patient."

He handed her the empty cup, and walked out of the house. There had
been no passion in his tone. His accent had been only that of a man who
has occasion to reprove an old and trusted servant for an unwarrantable
impertinence. Nancy Woolper stood at the street-door watching him as he
walked away, and then went slowly back to her duties in the lower
regions of the house.

"It can't be true," she muttered to herself; "it can't be true."

* * * * *

The dentist returned to Fitzgeorge-street in less than an hour,
bringing with him a surgeon from the neighbourhood, who saw the
patient, discussed the treatment, spoke hopefully to Mrs. Halliday, and
departed, after promising to send a saline draught. Poor Georgy's
spirits, which had revived a little under the influence of the
stranger's hopeful words, sank again when she discovered that the
utmost the new doctor could do was to order a saline draught. Her
husband had taken so many saline draughts, and had been getting daily
worse under their influence.

She watched the stranger wistfully as he lingered on the threshold to
say a few words to Mr. Sheldon. He was a very young man, with a frank
boyish face and a rosy colour in his cheeks. He looked like some fresh
young neophyte in the awful mysteries of medical science, and by no
means the sort of man to whom one w