“Isn’t that like an Englishman! He cultivates propriety even in the immoral.”
Then Miss Ley asked Frank about himself, but they had corresponded with diligence, and he had little to tell. The work at Saint Luke’s went on monotonously—lectures to students three times a week, and out-patients on Wednesday and Saturday. People were beginning to come to his consulting-room in Harley Street, and he looked forward, without great enthusiasm, to the future of a fashionable physician.
“And are you in love?”
“You know I shall never permit my affections to wander so long as you remain single,” he answered, laughing.
“Beware I don’t take you at your word and drag you by the hair of your head to the altar. Have I no rival?”
“Well, if you press me, I will confess.”
“Monster, what is her name?”
“Bilharzia hæmatobi.”
“Good heavens!”
“It’s a parasite I’m studying. I think authorities are all wrong about it. They’ve not got its life-history right, and the stuff they believe about the way people catch it is sheer footle.”