“Bobus is not really cleverer than Jock,” said Armine.
“Yet the Skipjack seemed the most improbable one of all,” said his mother. “I wish he were not deprived of it, after all!”
“Perhaps he is not,” said Armine. “He told me he had been comparing the MS. notes with Dr. Ruthven’s published paper, and he thought my father saw farther into the capabilities.”
“Well, he will do right with it. I am thankful to leave it in such hands as his and the Monk’s.”
“Then it was this,” continued Allen, “that was the key to poor Janet’s history. I suppose she hoped to qualify herself when she was madly set on going to Zurich.”
“Though I told her I could never commit it to her; but she knew just enough to make that wretched man fancy it a sort of quack secret, and he managed to persuade her that he had real ability to pursue the discovery for her. Poor Janet! it has been no magnum bonum to her, I fear. If I could only know where she is.”
A civil, but not a very eager note came in reply to John from Dr. Ruthven, making the appointment, but so dispassionately that he might fairly be supposed to expect little from the interview.
However, they came home more than satisfied. Perhaps in the interim Dr. Ruthven had learnt what manner of young men they were, and the honours they had won, for he had received them very kindly, and had told them how a conversation with Joseph Brownlow had put him on the scent of what he had since gradually and experimentally worked out, and so fully proved to himself, that he had begun treatment on that basis, and with success, though he had only as yet brought a portion of his fellow physicians to accept his system.
Lucas had then explained as much as was needful, and shown him the notes. He read with increasing eagerness, and presently they saw his face light up, and with his finger on the passage they had expected, he said, “This is just what I wanted. Why did I not think of it before?” and asked permission to copy the passage.
Then he urged the publication of the notes in some medical journal, showing true and generous anxiety that honour should be given where honour was due, and that his system should have the support of a name not yet forgotten. Further, he told his visitors that they would hear from him soon, and altogether they came home so much gratified that the mother began to lose her sense of being forestalled. She was hard at work in her own way on a set of models for dinner-table ornaments which had been ordered. “Pot-boilers” had unfortunately much more success than the imaginary groups she enjoyed.