the right, whatever that conviction may cost us. Abbey Hill had been
in the habit of appointing, amongst other objects of patronage, its own
physician. But that habit had fallen into disuse during the latter years
of my predecessor's practice. His superiority over all other medical
men in the town had become so incontestable, that, though he was
emphatically the doctor of Low Town, the head of its hospitals and
infirmaries, and by birth related to its principal traders, still as
Abbey Hill was occasionally subject to the physical infirmities of
meaner mortals, so on those occasions it deemed it best not to push
the point of honour to the wanton sacrifice of life. Since Low Town
possessed one of the most famous physicians in England, Abbey Hill
magnanimously resolved not to crush him by a rival. Abbey Hill let him
feel its pulse.

When my predecessor retired, I had presumptuously expected that the Hill
would have continued to suspend its normal right to a special physician,
and shown to me the same generous favour it had shown to him, who had
declared me worthy to succeed to his honours. I had the more excuse for
this presumption because the Hill had already allowed me to visit a fair
proportion of its invalids, had said some very gracious things to me
about the great respectability of the Fenwick family, and sent me some
invitations to dinner, and a great many invitations to tea.

But my self-conceit received a notable check. Abbey Hill declared that
the time had come to reassert its dormant privilege; it must have a
doctor of its own choosing,--a doctor who might, indeed, be permitted
to visit Low Town from motives of humanity or gain, but who must
emphatically assert his special allegiance to Abbey Hill by fixing
his home on that venerable promontory. Miss Brabazon, a spinster of
uncertain age but undoubted pedigree, with small fortune but high nose,
which she would pleasantly observe was a proof of her descent from
Humphrey Duke of Gloucester (with whom, indeed, I have no doubt, in
spite of chronology, that she very often dined), was commissioned to
inquire of me diplomatically, and without committing Abbey Hill too much
by the overture, whether I would take a large and antiquated mansion, in
which abbots were said to have lived many centuries ago, and which was
still popularly styled Abbots' House, situated on the verge of the Hill,
as in that case the "Hill" would think of me.

"It is a large house for a single m