Restraint would have been almost as odious as bankruptcy to him, yet now, as a sure means of escape from the other, it seemed almost a pleasant prospect.
He left Verreys' and walked along feeling brighter and better. He turned into the Athenæum. It was turning-in time at the Athenæum, and the big armchairs were full of somnolent ones, bald heads drooping, whiskers hidden by the sheets of the Times. Here he met Sir Ralph Puttick, Hon. Physician to His Majesty, stiff, urbane, stately, seeming ever supported on either side by a lion and a unicorn.
Sir Ralph and Simon were known one to the other and had much in common, including anti-socialism.
In armchairs, they talked of Lloyd George—at least, Sir Ralph did, Simon had other considerations on his mind. Leaning forward in his chair, he suddenly asked, apropos of nothing:
"Did you ever hear of a disease called Lethmann's disease?"
Now Sir Ralph was Chest and Heart, nothing else. He was also nettled at "shop" being suddenly thrust upon him by a damned attorney, for Simon was "Simon Pettigrew, quite a character, one of our old-fashioned, first-class English lawyers," when Sir Ralph was in a good temper and happened to consider Simon; nettled, Simon was a "damned attorney."
"Never," said Sir Ralph. "What disease did you say?"
"Lethmann's. It's a new disease, it seems."
Another horrid blunder, as though the lion and unicorn man were only acquainted with old diseases—out of date, in fact.
"Never," replied the other. "There's no such thing. Who told you about it?"