round for her
husband.

But Doctor Kimble (country apothecaries in old days enjoyed that title
without authority of diploma), being a thin and agile man, was flitting
about the room with his hands in his pockets, making himself agreeable
to his feminine patients, with medical impartiality, and being welcomed
everywhere as a doctor by hereditary right--not one of those miserable
apothecaries who canvass for practice in strange neighbourhoods, and
spend all their income in starving their one horse, but a man of
substance, able to keep an extravagant table like the best of his
patients. Time out of mind the Raveloe doctor had been a Kimble;
Kimble was inherently a doctor's name; and it was difficult to
contemplate firmly the melancholy fact that the actual Kimble had no
son, so that his practice might one day be handed over to a successor
with the incongruous name of Taylor or Johnson. But in that case the
wiser people in Raveloe would employ Dr. Blick of Flitton--as less
unnatural.

"Did you speak to me, my dear?" said the authentic doctor, coming
quickly to his wife's side; but, as if foreseeing that she would be too
much out of breath to repeat her remark, he went on immediately--"Ha,
Miss Priscilla, the sight of you revives the taste of that
super-excellent pork-pie. I hope the batch isn't near an end."

"Yes, indeed, it is, doctor," said Priscilla; "but I'll answer for it
the next shall be as good. My pork-pies don't turn out well by chance."

"Not as your doctoring does, eh, Kimble?--because folks forget to take
your physic, eh?" said the Squire, who regarded physic and doctors as
many loyal churchmen regard the church and the clergy--tasting a joke
against them when he was in health, but impatiently eager for their aid
when anything was the matter with him. He tapped his box, and looked
round with a triumphant laugh.

"Ah, she has a quick wit, my friend Priscilla has," said the doctor,
choosing to attribute the epigram to a lady rather than allow a
brother-in-law that advantage over him. "She saves a little pepper to
sprinkle over her talk--that's the reason why she never puts too much
into her pies. There's my wife now, she never has an answer at her
tongue's end; but if I offend her, she's sure to scarify my throat with
black pepper the next day, or else give me the colic with watery
greens. That's an awful tit-for-tat." Here the vivacious doctor made
a pathetic grimace.

"Did you ever hear the