“Not so many as I believe there have sometimes been. There are two or three ladies.”
“Well,” my interlocutor observed, “I’m very fond of ladies’ society. I think when it’s really nice there’s nothing comes up to it. I’ve got two ladies here myself. I must make you acquainted with them.” And then after I had rejoined that I should be delighted and had inquired of him if he had been long in Europe: “Well, it seems precious long, but my time’s not up yet. We’ve been here nineteen weeks and a half.”
“Are you travelling for pleasure?” I hazarded.
Once more he inclined his face to me—his face that was practically so odd a comment on my question, and I so felt his unspoken irony that I soon also turned and met his eyes. “No, sir. Not much, sir,” he added after a considerable interval.
“Pardon me,” I said; for his desolation had a little the effect of a rebuke.
He took no notice of my appeal; he simply continued to look at me. “I’m travelling,” he said at last, “to please the doctors. They seemed to think they’d enjoy it.”
“Ah, they sent you abroad for your health?”
“They sent me abroad because they were so plaguey muddled they didn’t know what else to do.”
“That’s often the best thing,” I ventured to remark.
“It was a confession of medical bankruptcy; they wanted to stop my run on them. They didn’t know enough to cure me, as they had originally pretended they did, and that’s the way they thought they’d get round it. I wanted to be cured—I didn’t want to be transported. I hadn’t done any harm.” I could but assent to the general proposition of the inefficiency of doctors, and put to my companion that I hoped he hadn’t been seriously ill. He only shook his foot at first, for some time, by way of answer; but at last, “I didn’t get natural rest,” he wearily observed.