"Well, you may as well know at once that a doctor in a hotel will never get any forwarder in Coombe. You'll have to get boarding somewhere. Have you looked around yet?"
"No. I—"
"Then I don't mind telling you that the spare-room is to let and the little room down below that has a door of its own and seems made exactly for a doctor's office. I shouldn't mind letting you have them if you feel sure that the smells wouldn't get loose all through the house and in the cooking. There's a barn where you could keep your horse."
"I haven't got a horse," protested Callandar feebly.
"But of course you'll be getting one. A doctor has to have a horse. If you can't pay for it down, Mark knows some one who'd let you have a good one on time. You can trust Mark, if he is mournful. Of course I don't say that these rooms are the only rooms to let in Coombe, but I do think they're about as good as you can get—being so near to Dr. Coombe's old house. People get used to coming for a doctor down this street."
"But that was, over a year ago."
"It takes more 'an a year for Coombe folks to change their ways. Only this day week I saw Bill Brooks tearing down this way on account of Mrs. Brooks' being took kind of unexpected, and Bill losing his head and forgetting all about Dr. Coombe being dead and Dr. Parker living on the other side of the town."
"And you think that if I'd been here he would have 'tore' in here?"
"If he hadn't I'd just have called out to him as he went by. He was that wild he'd have taken anybody."
"I see," with humility. "I lost a good chance there!"