I shook out the skirts of my green silk, I cast a last inspiriting glance at the Mayonnaise. Nugent's cheerful voice reached me from the garden, conducting the strangers. "This way, gentlemen—follow me." A pause. Steps outside. The door opened. Nugent brought them in.
Herr Grosse, from America. Mr. Sebright of London.
The German gave a little start when my name was mentioned. The Englishman remained perfectly unaffected by it. Herr Grosse had heard of my glorious Pratolungo. Mr. Sebright was barbarously ignorant of his existence. I shall describe Herr Grosse first, and shall take the greatest pains with him.
A squat, broad, sturdy body, waddling on a pair of short bandy legs; slovenly, shabby, unbrushed clothes; a big square bilious-yellow face, surmounted by a mop of thick iron-grey hair; dark beetle-brows; a pair of staring, fierce, black, goggle eyes, with huge circular spectacles standing up like fortifications in front of them; a shaggy beard and mustache of mixed black, white, and grey; a prodigious cameo ring on the forefinger of one hairy hand; the other hand always in and out of a deep silver snuff-box like a small tea-caddy; a rough rasping voice; a diabolically humourous smile; a curtly confident way of speaking; resolution, independence, power, expressed all over him from head to foot—there is the portrait of the man who held in his hands (if Nugent was to be trusted) the restoration of Lucilla's sight!
The English oculist was as unlike his German colleague as it is possible for one human being to be to another.
Mr. Sebright was slim and spare, and scrupulously (painfully) clean and neat. His smooth light hair was carefully parted; his well-shaved face exhibited two little crisp morsels of whisker about two inches long, and no hair more. His decent black clothes were perfectly made; he wore no ornaments, not even a watch-chain; he moved deliberately, he spoke gravely and quietly; disciplined attention looked coldly at you out of his light grey eyes; and said, Here I am if you want me, in every movement of his thin finely-cut lips. A thoroughly capable man, beyond all doubt—but defend me from accidentally sitting next to him at dinner, or traveling with him for my only companion on a long journey!
I received these distinguished persons with my best grace. Herr Grosse complimented me in return on my illustrious name, and shook hands. Mr. Sebright said it was a beautiful day, and bowed. The German, the moment he was at liberty to look about him, looked at the luncheon-table. The Englishman looked out of window.
"Will you take some refreshment, gentlemen?"
Herr Grosse nodded his shock head in high approval. His wild eyes glared greedily at the Mayonnaise through his prodigious spectacles. "Aha! I like that," said the illustrious surgeon, pointing at the dish with his ringed forefinger. "You know how to make him—you make him with creams. Is he chickens or lobsters? I like lobsters best, but chickens is goot too. The garnish is lofely—anchovy, olive, beetroots; brown, green, red, on a fat white sauce! This I call a heavenly dish. He is nice-cool in two different ways; nice-cool, to the eye, nice-cool to the taste! Soh! we will break into his inside. Madame Pratolungo, you shall begin. Here goes for the liver-wings!"
In this extraordinary English—turning words in the singular into words in the plural, and banishing from the British vocabulary the copulative conjunction "and"—Herr Grosse announced his readiness to sit down to lunch. He was politely recalled from the Mayonnaise to the patient by his discreet English colleague.