'Without letting yourself, then?'
'No, indeed!' returned Lance, almost petulantly; 'I never had the chance. How should I? It would have been something to care about.'
'This fellow does not half believe in me,' muttered the Doctor.
'Lance, do you remember consulting me before, when you thought your brains were addled by the sun-stroke?'
'They might as well have been, for any good I have done with them.'
'I thought you were one of the lights of Bexley.'
'A nice sort of light, and place too,' muttered he, with scant courtesy; but the Doctor caught an idea from the dull weary tone.
'It must be a dullish sort of life,' he threw out.
'Can't be helped,' in the same tone, almost conveying that it was merely his own affair. 'It was my own doing; and I've been like this before, and come round.'
'Your chest has been as sound as a bell before!' said the Doctor, with a little wilful misunderstanding.