e way, Ridgeon, that reminds me. Ive
been talking to that poor girl. It's her husband; and she thinks it's
a case of consumption: the usual wrong diagnosis: these damned general
practitioners ought never to be allowed to touch a patient except under
the orders of a consultant. She's been describing his symptoms to me;
and the case is as plain as a pikestaff: bad blood-poisoning. Now she's
poor. She cant afford to have him operated on. Well, you send him to me:
I'll do it for nothing. Theres room for him in my nursing home. I'll put
him straight, and feed him up and make him happy. I like making people
happy. [He goes to the chair near the window].

EMMY [looking in] Here he is.

Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington wafts himself into the room. He is a tall
man, with a head like a tall and slender egg. He has been in his time a
slender man; but now, in his sixth decade, his waistcoat has filled out
somewhat. His fair eyebrows arch good-naturedly and uncritically. He
has a most musical voice; his speech is a perpetual anthem; and he never
tires of the sound of it. He radiates an enormous self-satisfaction,
cheering, reassuring, healing by the mere incompatibility of disease or
anxiety with his welcome presence. Even broken bones, it is said, have
been known to unite at the sound of his voice: he is a born healer, as
independent of mere treatment and skill as any Christian scientist. When
he expands into oratory or scientific exposition, he is as energetic as
Walpole; but it is with a bland, voluminous, atmospheric energy,
which envelops its subject and its audience, and makes interruption or
inattention impossible, and imposes veneration and credulity on all but
the strongest minds. He is known in the medical world as B. B.; and the
envy roused by his success in practice is softened by the conviction
that he is, scientifically considered, a colossal humbug: the fact
being that, though he knows just as much (and just as little) as his
contemporaries, the qualifications that pass muster in common men reveal
their weakness when hung on his egregious personality.

B. B. Aha! Sir Colenso. Sir Colenso, eh? Welcome to the order of
knighthood.

RIDGEON [shaking hands] Thank you, B. B.

B. B. What! Sir Patrick! And how are we to-day? a little chilly? a
little stiff? but hale and still the cleverest of us all. [Sir Patrick
grunts]. What! Walpole! the absent-minded beggar: eh?

WALPOLE. What does that mean?

B. B. Have you forgott