THE DISTANT COUSINS The end of the week found Brock quite thoroughly domesticated--to use an expression supplied by his new sister-in-law.

True, he had gone through some trying ordeals and had lost not a little of his sense of locality, but he was rapidly recovering it as the pathway became easier and less obscure.

At first he was irritatingly remiss in answering to the name of Medcroft; but, to justify the stupidity, it is only necessary to say that he had fallen into a condition which scarcely permitted him to know his own name, much less that of another.

He was under the spell! Wherefore it did not matter at all what name he went by: he would have answered as readily to one as the other.
He blandly ignored telegrams and letters addressed to Roxbury Medcroft, and once he sat like a lump, with everyone staring at him, when the chairman of the architects' convention asked if Mr.Medcroft had anything to say on the subject under discussion.

He was forced, in some confusion, to attribute his heedlessness to a life-long defect in hearing.