n a footman. He had a very
suspicious eye, and he fixed it on me unpleasantly when I handed him my
card.

I was shown into a morning-room exactly like other morning-rooms in
country houses.

After a long delay the doctor came in, with scientific butchers' sleeves
on his arms, and an apron tied round his portly waist. He apologized for
coming down in his working dress, and said everything that was civil and
proper about the pleasure of unexpectedly seeing me again so soon. There
was something rather preoccupied, I thought, in those brightly resolute
eyes of his; but I naturally attributed it to the engrossing influence
of his scientific inquiries. He was evidently not at all taken in by my
story about coming to Barkingham to fish; but he saw, as well as I did,
that it would do to keep up appearances, and contrived to look highly
interested immediately in my parchment-book. I asked after his daughter.
He said she was in the garden, and proposed that we should go and find
her. We did find her, with a pair of scissors in her hand, outblooming
the flowers that she was trimming. She looked really glad to see me--her
brown eyes beamed clear and kindly--she gave my hand another inestimable
shake--the summer breezes waved her black curls gently upward from her
waist--she had on a straw hat and a brown Holland gardening dress.
I eyed it with all the practical interest of a linendraper. O Brown
Holland you are but a coarse and cheap fabric, yet how soft and
priceless you look when clothing the figure of Alicia!

I lunched with them. The doctor recurred to the subject of my angling
intentions, and asked his daughter if she had heard what parts of the
stream at Barkingham were best for fishing in.

She replied, with a mixture of modest evasiveness and adorable
simplicity, that she had sometimes seen gentlemen angling from a
meadow-bank about a quarter of a mile below her flower-garden. I risked
everything in my usual venturesome way, and asked if she would show
me where the place was, in case I called the next morning with my
fishing-rod. She looked dutifully at her father. He smiled and nodded.
Inestimable parent!

On rising to take leave, I was rather curious to know whether he would
offer me a bed in the house, or not. He detected the direction of my
thoughts in my face and manner, and apologized for not having a bed to
offer me; every spare room in the house being occupied by his chemical
assistants, and by the lumber of l