When George had eaten everything he could find on the table, he lighted a cigarette,—right there in the dining-room, too, and under his mother’s eyes,—and we had a good, long, jolly talk together, Bessie sitting between us and feasting her eyes on her brother’s comeliness. He certainly was handsome.
“I have no plans,” he said, “except to loaf here awhile and wait for an opening.”
“A French Micawber,” said I. “And I suppose you know all about medicine and surgery?”
“I have learned when not to give medicine, I believe, and so, I think, I can save lots of lives.”
A few days after George’s arrival we received a call from the Watsons. I had never had the pleasure of meeting the Watsons, but I had had the Watsons held up before me as examples of the right sort of style so many times, that I felt already well acquainted with them.
Mr. Watson was a very retiring, quiet little man, awed into obscurity by his wife. After a long and persistent effort to interest him in conversation, I was compelled to give it up, and to leave him smiling blankly, with his gaze directed toward the Argand burner.
Mrs. Watson was immense in every sense of the word. Her moral and mental dimensions were awe-inspiring; and she delivered what I afterwards found, on reflection, to be very commonplace utterances in a style in which unction, dogmatism, self-satisfaction, and finality were predominant. Once, when she had brought forth an unusually imposing sentence, her husband fairly smacked his lips.
The Watsons had no children. They were among the most prominent attendants of St. Thomas’s, and the old gentleman was reputed to be worth about a million.
George came in while the call was in progress, and after greeting the Watsons, he turned to Mrs. W., and uttered one of the most polished, delicate, pleasing little compliments it has ever been my fortune to hear uttered. Then he quietly withdrew into the background.
Just then some more callers were announced, and what was my surprise to see Mr. Desmond and Miss Van Duzen enter. The former was as resplendent as to his watch-chain as ever, and his niece looked charming. Introductions all round followed, and the company broke up into groups.