earing witness to their
chronic qualifications for it. Sally was mysteriously hardhearted about
them, while fully admitting their claims on the public.

"That's right, Dr. Conrad"--Sally had inaugurated this name for
herself--"Honoria Purvis Shoosmith. Mind you put in the Purvis right.
Now write down lots of diseases for her to have." Sally is leaning
over the doctor's chair to see him write as she says this. There is
something in the atmosphere of the situation that seems to clash with
the actual business in hand. The doctor endeavours, not seriously
enough, perhaps, to infuse a flavour of responsibility.

"My professional dignity, Miss Nightingale, will not permit of the
scheme of diagnosis you indicate. If any disorders entirely without
symptoms were known to exist, I should be delighted to ascribe the
whole of them to Mrs. Shoosmith...."

"Don't be prosy, Dr. Conrad. Fire away! You told me lots--you know you
did! Rheumatic arthritis--gout--pyaemia...."

"Come, I say, Miss Sally, draw it mild. I never said pyaemia. _An_aemia,
perhaps...."

"Very well, Anne, then! We can let it go at that. Fire away!" The
doctor looks round his own corner at the rows of pearls and the laugh
that frames them, the merry eyebrows and the scintillating eyes they
accentuate. A perilous intoxication, not to be too freely indulged in
by a serious professional man at any time--in business hours certainly
not. But if the doctor were quite in earnest over a sort of Spartan
declaration of policy his heart feels the prudence of, would that
responsive twinkle flutter in his face behind its mock gravity? He is
all but head over ears in love with Sally--so why pretend? Really, we
don't know--and that's the truth.

"Wouldn't it be a good way to consider what it is that is really the
matter, and make out the statement accordingly?" He goes on looking
at Sally, scratches himself under the chin with his pen, and waits
for an answer.

"Good, sensible, general practitioner! See how practical he is! Now,
I should never have thought of that!"

"Well, what shall we put her down as? Chronic arthritis--spinal
curvature--tuberculosis of the cervical vertebrae?"

"Those all sound very nice. But I don't think it matters which you
choose. If she hasn't got it now, she'll develop it if I describe
it. When I told her mother couldn't get rid of her neuritis, she
immediately asked to know the symptoms, and forthwith claimed them
as her own. 'Well, there no