When the old doctor came home now on cold nights it was not with his cravat in his pocket, and Grizel knew very well who had put it round his neck.

McQueen never had the humiliation, so distressing to an old doctor, of being asked by patients to send his assistant instead of coming himself.

He thought they preferred him, and twitted David about it; but Grizel knew that David had sometimes to order them to prefer the old man.

She knew that when he said good-night and was supposed to have gone to his lodgings, he was probably off to some poor house where, if not he, a tired woman must sit the long night through by a sufferer's bedside, and she realized with joy that his chief reason for not speaking of such things was that he took them as part of his natural work and never even knew that he was kind.

He was not specially skilful, he had taken no honours either at school or college, and he considered himself to be a very ordinary young man.