Rose and Rose

This etext was transcribed by Les Bowler
BY E. V. LUCAS
SECOND EDITION
METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON
Fifty years ago, when I was a young medical student, I was in the habit of spending as many week-ends as possible at home with my father, to whose practice I was one day to succeed.
On a certain Saturday the only other occupants of the railway compartment were an artist and his wife. I knew him to be an artist from certain scraps of his conversation that I overheard, but I should have guessed it also on the evidence of his hands and dress. I don’t mean that he wore a black velvet tam-o’-shanter and trousers tight at the ankles, as in plays; but his hands were eloquent, and there was a general careless ease about his tweeds that suggested the antipodes of any commercial or anxious calling.
After a while he turned to me and asked if I knew the town of Lowcester.
I said that I had lived in the neighbourhood—at Bullingham, five miles away—all my life.
“We are going to spend a few days at the Crown at Lowcester,” he said, “looking about to try and find a house.”
“There’s a very good house at Bullingham,” I said: “just empty. Jolly garden too. As a matter of fact it adjoins ours. My father’s the doctor.”
“Next door to the doctor,” said the lady, speaking now for the first time. “That would be a great convenience.”
One result of this chance meeting was that they took the house and we became friends; another was the general shaping of my life; and a third is this narrative, the fruit of an old man’s egoism and leisure.