"For if I live to a hundred," thought Jim, still staunch to his lady-love, "I shall never meet such an angel again. Henceforth, J. Mortimer, you've got to settle down to a bachelor existence. It's Dora or nobody, and, as it can't be Dora, it must be nobody."
It was lucky for Jim that he found heaps of work awaiting him in the shape of a long queue of humble patients, for he had no time to brood over his sorrows. He had to anoint unsavoury sores and bind up ugly wounds; he had to listen to long tales of neuralgias, sleepless nights, cramps, and the olla podrida of small woes to which our human flesh is heir--and heiress. It was chiefly heiress, as we have before remarked, at the Mount Street surgery. And Jim, of course, had to listen very carefully, for sometimes he found himself face to face with a malignant disease--something that called for prompt and accurate diagnosis. Love and lovers' thoughts must be driven into the background when a doctor finds himself gazing on a waxen-faced morsel of humanity which, unbeknown to its mother, has the seeds of diphtheria apparent in its wee throat--and such cases were presented to Jim in plenty. The dire complaints which came into Jim's surgery seemed to be shed upon him by a beneficent Providence, for they brought out the man and the surgeon, and bade the love-sick swain forget his own woes in the bodily ills of his fellow-creatures.
After the visiting patients had been dealt with, Jim went out upon his rounds. He returned to his surgery about tea-time, and had not been long back when the Chinaman adorning the mantelpiece was precipitated on to his face, and a sound of shuffling steps proceeded from the waiting-room.
"Come in!" bawled Jim, who was reading an evening paper by the fire. "Old Harris, I'll bet a dollar," he added to himself.
He had guessed aright. Mr Harris it was, but this time his disorder was something more substantial than a feeling as if his hair were being brushed. In point of fact, the face of the junior partner in the firm of Harris & Father was decorated with scratches.
The old man sank into a chair.
"I've come over for a box of ointment, doctor. You see these marks on my face?"
"They're pretty visible," said Jim.
"Rebecca!" explained the old man, in a hollow voice.
"Miss Nathan?"