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give my lady readers some tangible idea of the hero of this history. Connoisseurs in masculine beauty, of whom I have no pretensions to be one, have found fault with this or that feature; one was either not in strict proportion with the rest, or lacked force or sweetness; but on the whole, they were bound to admit that any alteration would have marred the full effect of one of Nature's master-pieces, and have converted an unusually attractive countenance into a common-place visage. So nearly do extremes approach each other; as it was, the youth was, indeed, as my cousin remarked, "A man to make every woman love, and every fop detest him."

"How very unfortunate!" I exclaimed, sotto voce, when I found that the young fellow had called in answer to my advertisement; "how very unfortunate that I should have engaged that other man! I did not like him a-bit, but thought he would suit, and had not seen another; how very provoking!"

"I am afraid you are rather young," I remarked, scanning the youth's face and form with well-pleased eye, for he was-eheupleasant to look on, as, I hope, I have made the reader to understand.

"I am twenty-two," he replied, gravely, as if one score years and two was quite a patriarchal age-I had mentally guessed him to be eighteen.

He had passed all his examinations, and was duly licensed to practice by the "College" and the "Hall."

He was a gentleman; his quiet, self-possessed manner and address were sufficient guarantees of that; and I felt a degree of hesitation that was quite unusual to me, when broaching the subject of his salary. The question, in point of fact, almost stuck in my throat; but I managed to get it out, or at least I was trying to shape my query into the least offensive form it was capable of assuming when, crimsoning to the tips of his ears, the young fellow anticipated me, and said: "My wages, you were going to observe ?"

I could not help smiling, "Salary-not wages; yes?"

Fifty pounds a year, I believe is the usual sum,"-the crimson tint deepening to carmine.

"Very well," I assented; although the man I had engaged had asked less, and my bricklayer would have come to me for thirty.

"It is customary," I continued, "to furnish a reference."

"I have none," replied the young fellow, frankly, and with unfaltering gaze, though I scrutinised him pretty closely as he spoke.

"No reference," I repeated, with affected indecision of manner,

though I had quite made up my mind to engage him, even were I obliged to pay the other man his twelve months' salary: "hem."

The youth shook his head: "I know no one in London. The professor at the hospital and some of the students know me by sight, and to speak to casually, but that is all; my landlady, if you lik● to ask her, can tell you about my habits while I have been in her house."

The address was somewhere in Bloomsbury, and the woman's name, though familiar, quite unknown to me.

"Very well," I answered, "I shall write to her; I have no doubt she will give you a good character. When could you come?" "To-morrow-to-day, if you like."

"Suppose we say the day after to-morrow," I replied.

He nodded acquiescently. The thought had occurred to me that my wife might be able to suggest some method of breaking off my rash engagement with the other man, whom neither of us liked ; and, moreover, I wished her to see this young fellow before I took any further steps in the matter.

“See,” I went on, after taking down the lodging-house keeper's name and address, " perhaps we had better say this day week, at the same hour; in the meantime I shall make inquiries, and I have no doubt we shall come to a satisfactory arrangement."

"Very well,” replied the youth, "as you please; this day week; good morning.

"Stop a minute; you know, I presume, what your duties will be?"

"Make myself generally useful?" he returned, with a half-smile, that caused a dimple in either cheek, while a slight flush again suffused his face and neck.

I nodded. "You can dispense; put up bottles; and so on?" The flush faded away completely, leaving the young fellow's face, not "deadly" pale, but white as the cheek of a lady who has lately risen from a bed of pain.

It was clear that my visitor was of a sensitive nature; had probably been delicately brought up, and had already experienced a reverse of fortune.

"Poor young fellow! you shall not be very sorely tried here," I mentally determined; and I knew that I could answer for my wife and children to treat the stranger kindly, and make him feel himself at home among us. As for the patients-well, they could not behave worse to him than they often did to me; it used to annoy me at first to find that my care and attention, not to speak of skill, had remained unappreciated; or my best intentions misrepresented, or misunderstood-he would get used to it, in time, as I had done. Sick people must not be judged by too severe a standard, for ill

health is a bad master of the ceremonies, and the convalescent often make amends for the rudeness and ingratitude of the patient.

"I have had lessons in dispensing," replied the youth; "I have been shown how to paper a bottle of medicine! and I understand book-keeping and prescribing."

"That will do," I said, "nicely. I shall expect you this day week."

I was on the point of offering him my hand, but the youth inclined his head so gravely, not to say haughtily, that I changed my mind; and, opening the door, bowed him out with as much ceremony as if he had been one of my carriage patients,―raræ aves in the neighbourhood of Victoria Park.

CHAPTER II.

My assistant, as I must call him, though as yet by anticipation, had not left me many minutes, when my wife and children returned from their morning walk.

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'Well, papa," exclaimed my eldest; any more aspirants?" "One," I replied, quite forgetting my bricklayer for the moment. "What is he like?" cried all the children in chorus.

"Does he wear gloves?" queried Ethel, glancing admiringly at her own hands, which were encased in the daintiest of primrose kids. "How old is he?" asked my wife.

"Whom shall I answer first among the 'upturned faces of the roses?'"' I inquired, reminded of poor Raven Poe's line by the sea of rosy, dimpled cheeks uplifted round me.

"Me! Me! Me!" and "Me!”

"Mamma first, I should say," I returned. "He says he is twenty-two, my dear, but does not look more than eighteen. He is a good-looking, gentlemanly little fellow, and had as nice a pair of gloves as you, Ethel"-for the hand-coverings of most of the aspirants had been a subject of much mirth in our family circle. Ethel clapped her hands.

"How unfortunate you should have engaged that Mr. Potts !" said my wife.

"Yes," I replied; "I am sorry for it, and rely upon your tact to get me out of the scrape, my dear."

My wife shook her head. "I see no help for it," she returned. "You might give him a month's notice if you did not like him; that is, if this gentleman would wait."

I shook my head in turn, and said, "I have told him to call again this day week, and he has gone away with the impression that I shall engage him then."

"Well, write to Mr. Potts, and tell him plainly that you hav

seen another person that will suit you better; offer him some remuneration for his disappointment, and I do not see that he can have any objection to such an arrangement.”

"It does not seem the correct thing to do," I replied, “and yet I do not want the fellow to come; I know I never shall be comfortable with him; whereas-"

I paused, and my wife took up the parable and said,“ By the bye, have you heard from the person Mr. Potts referred you to?"

"No, my dear, I have not; there is scarcely time; but I told him to consider himself engaged. I felt so jaded when he called, I was really glad of the prospect of securing anyone that seemed at all up to the mark."

"I do hope the referee will not reply to your note, my dear; or if he does that it will not be satisfactory; and if so, there is no difficulty about the matter. You said this gentleman was to call again in a week ?"

I nodded.

"Write to him, and tell him to come to-morrow; and if you think he will really suit you, close with him at once."

"I think you will like him, my dear," I remarked, meditatively.

"If he suits you," she replied with a smile, for she approves of being deferred to, dear little woman, "if he suits you, my dear, he will suit me; you will have more to say to him than I shal .” "Will he let me ride on his back, pap-pa?" queried my ungest talking cherub, Alfred, not quite three years old. "Of course not, Alfie," primly asserted his eldest sister. "Martin does," promptly exclaimed the little one. "Martin is only a page," explained Gertude, my second daughter, "and this gen tleman is—is▬▬

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An aspirant," I interposed, smiling, seeing her at a loss for a word; whereupon they all laughed, and my wife clapping her hands, exclaimed: "Come, come, children; up-stairs; off with your things, and let us get to lessons; Miss Montgomery will be here directly."

"The arrival of a patient expedited the departure of my flock; for the foregoing remarks had been interchanged in the hall-I meau, the passage; and retiring into my surgery, while the little ones scuttled upstairs to prepare for their daily governess, I was directly engaged in a deeply interesting conversation with the new arrival, one of my "club" patients.

"How are you to-day, Smith ?" I inquired, smiling blandly, as I motion the patient to a seat.

"Worse and worse," replied the man grimly; scowling at me as if I was the bitterest foe he had in the world.

"How is that? Have you taken your medicine?" I further inquire, with an appearance of great interest, and a design of casting oil on the troubled waters of the club-ma's temper-for the "club" is a large one, and the fellow a "most noble, grand bellpuller" in it. "Have you taken your medicine?"

"I have not "-decidedly, and in a deeply-injured tone of voice. "Why not?"

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"But if it searched you, you must, at least, have taken some of it."

"I took one dose; but it done me no good;" shaking his head and groaning dismally.

"You should have gone on with it."

"Me? no fear! It went in at my shoulders, and came out at the calves of my two legs, with such a searching all over, I thought I should a died."

"Oh, nonsense, man!"—rather warmly; "give me your bottle, and I'll make you up something else. Show me your tongue. Ha!" &c., &c.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!" I exclaim, mentally, as I retire behind my high counter to compound the fellow's physic; "I wish I had some one to relieve me of this drudgery."

"Dr. Deever."

It was the club man, Smith, who spoke.

"Yes," I reply, answering to a name which is not mine, but by which I am more frequently addressed by my aristocratic patients than by my own; "what is it?"

"Don't you go give me no peppermint, for I can't a-bear it; nor yet no salts; them's what you guv me last time," shaking his head knowingly.

“Ha ha!" I laugh, rather spasmodically; "you know too much, Mr. Smith."

"I believe you, doctor," returned the fellow with a grin, relax. ing for the first time since he came in, "too much for you, may be ; he! he! he! but I ain't a-going to be killed, nor poisoned neither, by no one; not if I know it,”—another chuckle, a wink, and, I fancy, a tongue thrust into one cheek, in appreciation of his own wit; but I have hastily retired behind my screen, and am not quite sure of the latter indignity.

Truly, a medical man, especially a club-doctor, at four shillings per annum, members to find their own bottles, should have the temper of an angel and the patience of Job; whereas I have neither, but, on the contrary, am blessed with seven children who must, precious darlings! be clothed, fed, and educated out of my earnings ah! dear me !

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