The room into which they had been shown was his consulting room, furnished in the simplest fashion--almost shabbily.

There were chairs and table and a couch, a small stand for a pile of magazines, a bookcase containing some medical works, and a sprawling hare's-foot fern in a large flowerpot by the window.

Mr.Pendleton seated himself near the fern, examining it as though it was a botanical rarity, and left his wife to undertake the conversation.

Mrs.Pendleton was accustomed to take the lead, and immediately commenced-- "I have taken the liberty of coming to ask your advice about my niece, doctor.

You heard what my brother said this afternoon ?" Dr.Ravenshaw inclined his head without speaking, and waited for her to continue.
"As you are a friend of my brother's--" "Hardly a friend," he interrupted, with a gesture of dissent.