and was an
energetic man. He was about fifty-four years old, tall,
largely-built, with a good figure, but with extraordinarily large
feet and hands. His face was red and clean-shaven, his eyes blue,
his teeth very good. He laughed and talked rather mouthingly.
Alvina, who knew what the nurses told her, knew that he had come as
a poor boy and bottle-washer to Dr. Robertson, a fellow-Scotchman,
and that he had made his way up gradually till he became a doctor
himself, and had an independent practice. Now he was quite rich--and
a bachelor. But the nurses did not set their bonnets at him very
much, because he was rather mouthy and overbearing.

In the houses of the poor he was a great autocrat.

"What is that stuff you've got there!" he inquired largely, seeing a
bottle of somebody's Soothing Syrup by a poor woman's bedside. "Take
it and throw it down the sink, and the next time you want a soothing
syrup put a little boot-blacking in hot water. It'll do you just as
much good."

Imagine the slow, pompous, large-mouthed way in which the red-faced,
handsomely-built man pronounced these words, and you realize why the
poor set such store by him.

He was eagle-eyed. Wherever he went, there was a scuffle directly
his foot was heard on the stairs. And he knew they were hiding
something. He sniffed the air: he glanced round with a sharp eye:
and during the course of his visit picked up a blue mug which was
pushed behind the looking-glass. He peered inside--and smelled it.

"Stout?" he said, in a tone of indignant inquiry: God-Almighty would
presumably take on just such a tone, finding the core of an apple
flung away among the dead-nettle of paradise: "Stout! Have you been
drinking stout?" This as he gazed down on the wan mother in the bed.

"They gave me a drop, doctor. I felt that low."

The doctor marched out of the room, still holding the mug in his
hand. The sick woman watched him with haunted eyes. The attendant
women threw up their hands and looked at one another. Was he going
for ever? There came a sudden smash. The doctor had flung the blue
mug downstairs. He returned with a solemn stride.

"There!" he said. "And the next person that gives you stout will be
thrown down along with the mug."

"Oh doctor, the bit o' comfort!" wailed the sick woman. "It ud never
do me no harm."

"Harm! Harm! With a stomach as weak as yours! Harm! Do you know
better than I do? What have I come here for? To be told by _you_
what wil