Everybody wondered at the prodigious size and beauty of the Diamond, as a matter of course.

But the only two of the company who said anything out of the common way about it were those two guests I have mentioned, who sat by Miss Rachel on her right hand and her left.
The guest on her left was Mr.Candy, our doctor at Frizinghall.
This was a pleasant, companionable little man, with the drawback, however, I must own, of being too fond, in season and out of season, of his joke, and of his plunging in rather a headlong manner into talk with strangers, without waiting to feel his way first.

In society he was constantly making mistakes, and setting people unintentionally by the ears together.

In his medical practice he was a more prudent man; picking up his discretion (as his enemies said) by a kind of instinct, and proving to be generally right where more carefully conducted doctors turned out to be wrong.
What HE said about the Diamond to Miss Rachel was said, as usual, by way of a mystification or joke.

He gravely entreated her (in the interests of science) to let him take it home and burn it.