The doctor laughed also. "Men have been hanged on less evidence than that," he admitted. "All the same I don't know where it came from. Some one must have judged me capable of wanting to take my own temperature. Anything else?"
"Only general deductions. You are a doctor, you are going to
Coombe—deduction, you are the doctor who is going to buy out Dr.
Simmonds's practice."
Callandar scrambled up from his pillow with a look of delighted surprise on his face.
"Why—so I am!" he exclaimed.
"You say that as if you had just found it out."
"Well, er—you see I had forgotten it—temporarily. My head, you know."
The suspicion in the girl's eyes melted into sympathy. "I suppose you know," she said with quite a motherly air, "that old Doc. Simmonds hasn't really any practice to sell?"
"No? That's bad. Hasn't he even a little one? You see" (the sympathy had been so pleasant that he felt he could do with a little more of it), "I could hardly manage a big one just now. As you may have noticed, my health is rather rocky. Got to lay up and all that—so it's just as well that old Simpkins' practice is on the ragged edge."
"The name is Simmonds, not Simpkins," coldly.
"Well, I didn't buy the name with the practice. My own name is
Callandar. Much nicer, don't you think?"