‘Don’t it look cheerful?’ asked Mrs. Evitt.
‘Is that the little room where the husband used to work?’ inquired Edward, pointing to the door.
‘Yea, but that doesn’t go with the drawing-room floor. I’ve let it to Mr. Gerard for a room to put his books in. He’s such a man for books. They overrun the place.’
‘Who is Mr. Gerard? Oh, by the way, that is the surgeon downstairs. How long has he been lodging with you?’
‘It was about a month after poor Madame Chicot’s death when he come. “I’m going to set up in business for myself, Mrs. Evitt,” he says. “I ain’t rich enough to buy a practice,” says he, “so I must try and make one for myself, somehow,” he says. “Now yours is a crowded neighbourhood, and I think I might do pretty well here, if you let me your ground floor cheap. It would be for a permanency,” says he, “so that ought to make a difference.” “I’ll do my best to meet you,” says I, “but my rent is high, and I never was a hour behind with it yet, and I never will be.” Well, sir, I let him have the rooms very low, considering their value, for I was that depressed in my sperrits it wasn’t in me to ’aggle. That ungrateful viper, Mrs. Rawber—a woman I’d waited on hand and foot, and fried onions for her until I’ve many a time turned faint over the frying pan—and she’s gone and turned her back upon me in my trouble, and took a first floor over a bootmaker’s, where the smell of the leather must be enough to poison a female of any refinement!’
‘Has Mr. Gerard succeeded in getting a practice?’ asked Edward.
‘Well, he do have patients,’ answered the landlady, dubiously; ‘gratis ones a many, between the hours of eight and nine every morning. He’s very steady and quiet in his ’abits, and that moderate that he could live where another would starve. He’s a wonderful clever young man, too; it was him—much more than the grand doctor—that pulled Madame Chicot through, after her accident.’
‘Indeed!’ said Edward, becoming suddenly interested; ‘then Mr. Gerard knew the Chicots?’
‘Knew ’em! I should think he did, indeed, poor young man! He attended Madame Chicot night and day for months, and if it hadn’t been for him I believe she’d have died. There never was a doctor so devoted, and all for love. He didn’t take a penny for his attendance.’
‘A most extraordinary young man,’ said Edward.