Caston picked the volume up from the floor.
"It seems that Twiddy was no end of a swell with his knife, so some one of his devoted descendants has had a life written of him, with all his letters included. He kept up an extensive correspondence, as people did in those days. He had a shrewd eye and a knack of telling a story. There's one here which I wish you to read if you will. No, not now--when I have gone. I have put a slip of paper in at the page. I think it will interest you."
Harry Caston went away. Mrs. Wordingham had her curtains closed and her lamps lit. She drew her chair up to the fire, and she opened "The Life and Letters of Mr. Edmund Twiddy, Surgeon, of Norwich," with a shrug of the shoulders and a little grimace of discontent. But the grimace soon left her face, and when her maid came with a warning that she had accepted an invitation for that night to dinner, she found her mistress with the book still open upon her knees, and her eyes staring with a look of wonder into the fire. For this is what she had read in "The Life and Letters of Mr. Edmund Twiddy."
"I have lately had a curious case under my charge, which has given me more trouble than I care to confess. For sentiment is no part of the equipment of a surgeon. It perplexed as well as troubled me, and some clue to the explanation was only afforded me yesterday. Three months ago my servant brought me word one evening that there was a lady very urgent to see me, of the name of Mrs. Braxfield. I replied that my work was done, and she must return at a more seasonable time. But while I was giving this message the door was pushed open, and already she stood in front of me. She was a slip of a girl, very pretty to look at, and shrinking with alarm at her own audacity. Yet she held her ground.
"'Mrs. Braxfield,' I cried, 'you have no right to be married--you are much too young! Young girls hooked at your age ought to be put back.'
"'I am ill,' she said, and I nodded to the servant to leave us.
"'Very well,' I said. 'What's the matter?'
"'My throat,' said she.
"I looked at it. There was trouble, but the trouble was not so very serious, though I recognised that at some time treatment would be advisable.
"'There's no hurry at all about it,' I said, when my examination was concluded, 'but, on the whole, you are right to get it looked to soon.' I spoke roughly, for I shrank a little from having this tender bit of a girl under my knife. 'Where's your husband?'