noon, was that
shrewd and good-natured visage, calling up an answering smile on every
face, and leaving every heart a little lighter than he found it.
Puzzling enough it was, alike to Heale and to Headley, how Tom
contrived, as if by magic, to gain every one's good word--their own
included. For Frank, in spite of Tom's questionable opinions, had
already made all but a confidant of the Doctor; and Heale, in spite
of envy and suspicion, could not deny that the young man was a very
valuable young man, if he wasn't given so much to those new-fangled
notions of the profession.

By which term Heale indicated the, to him, astounding fact, that Tom
charged the patients as little, instead of as much as possible, and
applying to medicine the principles of an enlightened political
economy, tried to increase the demand by cheapening the supply.

"Which is revolutionary doctrine, sir," said Heale to Lieutenant
Jones, over the brandy-and-water, "and just like what the Cobden
and Bright lot used to talk, and have been the ruin of British
agriculture, though don't say I said so, because of my Lord
Minchampstead. But, conceive my feelings, sir, as the father of a
family, who have my bread to earn, this very morning.--In comes old
Dame Penaluna (which is good pay I know, and has two hundred and more
out on a merchant brig) for something; and what was my feelings, sir,
to hear this young party deliver himself--'Well, ma'am,' says he, as I
am a living man, 'I can cure you, if you like, with a dozen bottles of
lotion, at eighteenpence a-piece; but if you'll take my advice, you'll
buy two pennyworth of alum down street, do what I tell you with it,
and cure yourself.' It's robbery, sir, I say, all these out-of-the-way
cheap dodges, which arn't in the pharmacopoeia, half of them; it's
unprofessional, sir--quackery."

"Tell you what, Doctor, robbery or none, I'll go to him to-morrow,
d'ye see, if I live as long, for this old ailment of mine. I never
told you of it, old pill and potion, for fear of a swinging bill: but
just grinned and bore it, d'ye see."

"There it is again," cries Heale in despair. "He'll ruin me."

"No, he won't, and you know it."

"What d'ye think he served me last week? A young chap comes in,
consumptive, he said, and I dare say he's right--he is uncommonly
'cute about what he calls diagnosis. Says he, 'You ought to try
Carrageen moss. It's an old drug, but it's a good one.' There was a
drawer full of it to his hand