"Far more numerous was the herd of such,
Who think too little, and who talk too much."
DRYDEN.
"I shall die if I don't talk."
REYNOLDS.
"THE world's in a queer state, Dr. Ingram," Mrs. Kennedy remarked one January afternoon. "Uncomfortable, don't you know?"
She spoke in a contemplative tone, lounging forward, while a loose tail of hair obtruded itself from beneath a not too tidy cap, and her placid gaze was riveted on the Doctor's face. He had been summoned to prescribe for Dicky something which should counteract a too unrestricted course of Christmas plum-cake and "sweeties." The Kennedy children were not trained to habits of self-control in minor matters.
It was three o'clock, and the Doctor had a long list of visits still to pay; yet he could not at once escape. Mrs. Kennedy, though minus the possession of a "glittering eye," like that of the Ancient Mariner, held him with such eyes as she had, refusing to see his anxiety to be off.
"Generally is!" responded her companion.
He was in appearance not at all the stereotyped doctor of novels. He was neither little nor bustling; and he did not jerk out a succession of medical phrases, to mystify the invalid's relations. Professionally, indeed, he was given to saying a very small amount—some complained, a too small amount—and what he did utter was rarely couched in learned language. Of medium height, not too substantial, yet not thin, he had reserved manners, which covered a gentle and sympathetic disposition. His prevailing expression was serious, but a substratum of humour occasionally reached the surface, through superimposed strata of a more solid kind.
Mrs. Kennedy's chief confidante was the Doctor's oldest daughter, Mabel; but she had not the least objection to confide in the Doctor himself, when opportunity offered.
"Uncomfortable, don't you think?" she repeated meditatively. "Everything going cranky, you know. And something ought to be done."
"To set the world right?"
"Well, but I mean, of course, our particular world. Dulveriford, don't you know? I'm not talking about all sorts of out of the world Tropics of Capricorns and longitudes and things," said Mrs. Kennedy, with a vague recollection of Dicky's last geography lesson before Christmas.