're that fond of them?"

"I find they agree with me. They are light and digestible. And my
stomach is as weak as a baby's."

The labourer wiped his big moustache on his sleeve.

"Mine _isna_, tha sees," he said, "so pap's no use. 'S watter ter
me. I want ter feel as I've had summat: a bit o' suetty dumplin' an'
a pint o' hale, summat ter fill th' hole up. An' tha'd be th' same
if tha did my work."

"If I did your work," sneered the doctor. "Why I do ten times the
work that any one of you does. It's just the work that has ruined my
digestion, the never getting a quiet meal, and never a whole night's
rest. When do you think _I_ can sit at table and digest my dinner? I
have to be off looking after people like you--"

"Eh, tha can ta'e th' titty-bottle wi' thee," said the labourer.

But Dr. Mitchell was furious for weeks over this. It put him in a
black rage to have his great manliness insulted. Alvina was quietly
amused.

The doctor began by being rather lordly and condescending with her.
But luckily she felt she knew her work at least as well as he knew
it. She smiled and let him condescend. Certainly she neither feared
nor even admired him. To tell the truth, she rather disliked him:
the great, red-faced bachelor of fifty-three, with his bald spot and
his stomach as weak as a baby's, and his mouthing imperiousness and
his good heart which was as selfish as it could be. Nothing can be
more cocksuredly selfish than a good heart which believes in its own
beneficence. He was a little too much the teetotaller on the one
hand to be so largely manly on the other. Alvina preferred the
labourers with their awful long moustaches that got full of food.
And he was a little too loud-mouthedly lordly to be in human good
taste.

As a matter of fact, he was conscious of the fact that he had risen
to be a gentleman. Now if a man is conscious of being a _gentleman_,
he is bound to be a little less than a _man_. But if he is gnawed
with anxiety lest he may _not_ be a gentleman, he is only pitiable.
There is a third case, however. If a man must loftily, by his
manner, assert that he is _now_ a gentleman, he shows himself a
clown. For Alvina, poor Dr. Mitchell fell into this third category,
of clowns. She tolerated him good-humouredly, as women so often
tolerate ninnies and _poseurs_. She smiled to herself when she saw
his large and important presence on the board. She smiled when she
saw him at a sale, buying the grandest pieces