By Clifford Ashdown,
Author of "The Adventures of Romney Pringle."
How I Met a Very Ignorant Practitioner.
A Complete Story.
"So you're Dr. Wilkinson," said Dr. Inns. "Rather young, ain't you? I've never had a local what-d'you-call-it before, but anyone from Adamson's sure to be all right. Been expecting you all day. Come in."
Adamson, the agent, good fellow that he was, never left me long unemployed, so here I was at Hestford—Hestford on the Wash, about the last place that was created, I should say. As I cycled the couple of miles from the station, leaving my traps to follow, I wondered what on earth could have induced any man to settle in such an out-of-the-way corner. The country was flat and sparsely-wooded, and the Virginia creeper, which covered the little house with just a trace of autumn bronzing, was about the only dash of colour in a singularly grey and cheerless landscape.
Dr. Inns, as he called himself, and as I shall therefore call him, was squat and thickset, with a mop of red hair and a stiff beard that looked as if he had forgotten to shave for a week, so short and stubbly was it. He was active enough for all his stoutness, and as I followed him through the cottage—it was nothing more—I noticed he was full of funny little jerks and starts, peering about him in bird-fashion, as if he feared an assailant at every turn. He opened the door of a room which I took to be the parlour, and curling up in the only easy chair, left me to find a seat for myself.
"We'd better get to business,” said he, "as I leave early to-morrow. Now this here's the room where I see everybody who comes—the consulting room, you'd call it—eh?"
I murmured something in reply, and cast a wondering look round. I have never seen a consulting room that so successfully concealed its character as this, for the only thing at all professional about the place was a battered old wooden stethoscope up on the mantel. Inns was evidently a practitioner of the old school, who scorned new-fangled aids to diagnosis. I am afraid I was taking too much stock of the room to pay heed to what he said; he must have been talking some time, but I fortunately began to listen just at the right moment.
"And now to tell you about this here case," he was saying. "He's had this inflammation of the lungs on him for the last six months."
"Six months!" I exclaimed in astonishment at such a record.
"Ah! all that and more," with a sage shake of the head.
"Is the temperature still high?"
"It's never been high."
My jaw fell.
"What! With pneumonia?" I protested.
"He's not had nemonia." This very
