BILLET DOUX.
Monday's breakfast is never a jovial affair. One always has the feeling that something dreadful has happened or is going to happen. Thus, three days ago I had with a light heart handed over my practice to a locum and my books to an accountant, telling the one to look up my bad patients and the other to look up my bad debts, while I went away to end the week with the Wrefords. Twelve hours ago it had seemed that I should never know such happiness in this world again as I had found with them, and here we all were on Monday morning with everything changed, Mrs. Wreford sulking in bed and Wreford displaying a polite but firm hatred of me and all the world. In this case my feeling was that something dreadful was happening.
"Mornin', Wreford," said I, as I took my place at table.
"Mornin', Everall," he grunted, barely looking up from his letters, and that seemed to end the dialogue. When, however, one's host is also one's most valuable patient, there is call for a special effort. He had all the correspondence, I had none; in an emergency this suggested itself as a matter of comment.
"To me," I said chattily, "things seem to be just as badly managed at the Post Office as they were in Samuel's time."
"Was there a post office in those days?" he asked, without noticeable enthusiasm.
"The Samuel Herbert," I explained, and that again seemed to end it.
After a pause, "However," I said kindly, "you enjoy your letters and I will find what consolation and company I can in a poached egg."
"Enjoy?" asked Wreford. "But you are being sarcastic, no doubt."
"Only panel doctors can afford to be that," I murmured.
Wreford's first letter appeared to pain him, and he looked at me sternly, as if the evils of this life were all my fault. Then he unbent a little.
"Tell me, Everall," said he, "have you enjoyed your little visit to us?"
The question took me by surprise but it was, at any rate, one to be answered in the affirmative.
"And you are proportionately grateful?" he pursued.
I protested, somewhat lamely, that I most certainly was.
"Gratitude, it seems," said he, "may express itself in the most odd manner."
"Mine," I replied stiffly, "will express itself in the customary letter."
"What, another?" he asked, adding, after a pause, "Do you refer to the note which your solicitors will write me forthwith and charge me three-and-sixpence for?"
I thought deeply but was baffled. "It is full early in the morning for the cryptic and abstruse," I said.
Wreford sighed as he slowly folded up his letter and put it in its envelope. "It is the one moment in the week," he explained, "when the very worst must be expected."
I begged him to elucidate the position.
"Suppose," said he, "you had invited a man to stay with you for the week-end, had motored him down from town on the Friday night and given him dinner and a nice big bed, and on Saturday more meals and more bed, and on Sunday still more meals and still more bed, and on the Monday morning a nice yellow-and-white poached egg all to himself."
"I quite appreciate all that," said I.
"And suppose, while he was still sitting at your table and working his way through the bit of toast where the egg once sat, you received a letter from him."
"A letter from me?" I cried.
"You said your thanks would be expressed in a letter, but the promptitude of it has surprised even yourself, hasn't it? I should have received it yesterday, but that there is no Sunday post, happily."
"You remember I said I was very grateful," said I, still not understanding.
"And I said that gratitude had a queer way of expressing itself sometimes," said he, handing over the letter at last. "Read it aloud," he added; "I find the style original."
"Harley Street, W. 25th April, 1914," I read. "Thomas Wreford, Esquire, debtor to John Everall. For professional services, 1912 to 1913, thirty-eight guineas."
"Go on," he said. "The postscript is where your gratitude becomes the most exuberant."
"Your attention will oblige," I finished.
"Well, what do you think of it?" he asked with a smile.
"I prefer not to," said I, also smiling tentatively.
There was a silence. "However," said Wreford eventually, "let us say no more about it." At this my smile became firmer and more expansive. "Let us agree," he said significantly, "to let bygones be bygones."
My smile died out suddenly, as smiles do on a Monday morning.
"In practice yesterday Mr. Hilton did 72 in a three-hole match."
Liverpool Daily Post.
We must challenge him at once.