"If you come here you will have to stand upon your own legs." "Quite so, Sir John, but I shall still hope for a few crumbs from the master's table." "Yes, yes, Therne, in anything of that sort you may rely upon me," and he bowed me out with an effusive smile.
"-- -- to poison the crumbs," I thought to myself, for I was never for one moment deceived as to this man's character.
A fortnight later Emma and I came to Dunchester and took up our abode in a quaint red-brick house of the Queen Anne period, which we hired for a not extravagant rent of 80 pounds a year.

Although the position of this house was not fashionable, nothing could have been more suitable from a doctor's point of view, as it stood in a little street near the market-place and absolutely in the centre of the city.

Moreover, it had two beautiful reception chambers on the ground floor, oak-panelled, and with carved Adam's mantelpieces, which made excellent waiting-rooms for patients.

Some time passed, however, and our thousand pounds, in which the expense of furnishing had made a considerable hole, was melting rapidly before those rooms were put to a practical use.

Both I and my wife did all that we could to get practice.