There at last was the name he wanted, on the door of a large building that looked rusty and shabby between its smart brick and stone neighbors—Dr. Camperdown, Surgeon. He repeated the words with a satisfied air, then making his way up a dark staircase, pushed open a door that had the polite invitation “Walk in” on it in staring letters. He found himself in a large, bare room, with a row of chairs set about its walls. Unfortunately for him, he was not the first on the field. Six of the chairs were occupied. Three old women, two young ones, and an old man, all poorly dressed and looking in their shabby clothes only half protected from the cold, eyed with small approval the smartly dressed officer who might prove to be a first claimant of the doctor’s attention. To their joy he took a seat at the back of the room, thereby giving notice that he was prepared to wait his turn.
They all looked up when the door of an inner apartment was opened. An ugly, sandy head appeared, and a sharp “Next” was flung into the room. One of the old women meekly prepared to enter, stripping off some outer wrap which she dropped on the chair behind her.
“Take your cloud with you,” said one of the younger women kindly; “he’ll let you out by another door into the hall.”
After what seemed to Captain Macartney an unconscionably long time, the door was again opened, and another “Next” was ejaculated. His jaws ached with efforts to suppress his yawns. He longed in vain for a paper.
Finally, after long, weary waiting and much internal grumbling, all his fellow-sufferers had one by one disappeared, and he had the room to himself. The last to go, the old man, stayed in the inner office a longer time than all the others combined, and Captain Macartney, fretting and chafing with impatience, sprang to his feet, and walking up and down the room, stared at everything in it, singly and collectively. He found out how many chairs were there. He counted the cobwebs, big and little, high up in the corners. He discovered that one leg of the largest press was gone, and that a block of wood had been stuck in its place, thereby rendering it exceedingly shaky and unsteady. He speculated on the number of weeks that had elapsed since the windows had been washed. He wondered why they should be so dirty and the floor so clean, when suddenly, to his immense relief, the door opened and Dr. Camperdown stood before him.
His hair was shaggy and unkempt, his sharp gray eyes, hiding under the huge eyebrows, were fixed piercingly on the military figure which he came slowly toward, the more closely to examine. His long arms, almost as long as those of the redoubtable Rob Roy—who, Sir Walter Scott tells us, could, without stooping, tie the garters of his Highland hose placed two inches below the knee—were pressed against his sides, and his hands were rammed down into the pockets of an old coffee-colored, office coat, on which a solitary button lingered.
“Macartney, is it you,” he said doubtfully, “or your double?”
“Myself,” said the officer with a smile and extending his hand.
“Come in, come in,” said Dr. Camperdown, passing into the other room. “Sit down,” dragging forward a leather chair on which the dust lay half an inch thick. “Afraid of the dust? Finicky as ever. Wait, I’ll clean it for you—where’s my handkerchief? Gave it to that old woman. Stop a bit—here’s a towel. Now for a talk.” Sprawled out across two chairs, and biting and gnawing at his moustache as if he would uproot it, he gazed with interest at his visitor. “What are you doing in Halifax? Are you in the new regiment?”
“Yes; I arrived three days ago in the ‘Acadian.’”