The doctor's dilemma By Hesba Stretton Author:Sarah Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER FORTY-FOURTH THE TABLES TURNED. A DREARY season was that first winter in London. It happened quite naturally that here, as in Guernsey, my share... more » of the practice fell among the lower and least important class of patients. Jack Senior had been on the field some years sooner, and he was London-born and Londonbred. All the surroundings of his life fitted him without a wrinkle. He was at home everywhere, and would have counted the pulse of a duchess with as little emotion as that of a dairy-maid. On the other hand, I could not accommodate myself altogether to haughty and aristocratic strangers—though I am somewhat ante-dating later experiences, for during the winter our fashionable clients were all out of town, and our time comparatively unoccupied. To be at ease anywhere it was, at that time, essential to me to know something of the people with whom I was associating—an insular trait, common to all those who are brought up in a contracted and isolated circle. Besides this rustic embarrassment which hung like a clog about me out of doors, within doors I missed wofully the dainty feminine ways I had been used to. There was a trusty female servant,half cook, half housekeeper, who lived in the front kitchen and superintended our household; but she was not at all the angel in the house whom I needed. It was a well-appointed, handsome dwelling, but it was terribly gloomy. The heavy, substantial leather chairs always remained undisturbed in level rows against the wall, and the crimson cloth upon the table was as bare as a billiard-table. A thimble lying upon it, or fallen on the carpet and almost crushed by my careless tread, would have been as welcome a sight to me as a blade of grass or a spring of water in some sandy desert. The sound of a light foot and rustling dress...« less