Mr. Bernard and Miss
Letty were having a snug _tete-a-tete_ in the recess of a bay-window.
The two Doctors had taken two armchairs and sat squared off against each
other. Their conversation is perhaps as well worth reporting as that of
the rest of the company, and, as it was earned on in a louder tone, was
of course more easy to gather and put on record.
It was a curious sight enough to see those two representatives of two
great professions brought face to face to talk over the subjects they
had been looking at all their lives from such different points of view.
Both were old; old enough to have been moulded by their habits of
thought and life; old enough to have all their beliefs "fretted in," as
vintners say,--thoroughly worked up with their characters. Each of them
looked his calling. The Reverend Doctor had lived a good deal among
books in his study; the Doctor, as we will call the medical gentleman,
had been riding about the country for between thirty and forty years.
His face looked tough and weather-worn; while the Reverend Doctor's,
hearty as it appeared, was of finer texture. The Doctor's was the graver
of the two; there was something of grimness about it,--partly owing
to the northeasters he had faced for so many years, partly to long
companionship with that stern personage who never deals in sentiment or
pleasantry. His speech was apt to be brief and peremptory; it was a way
he had got by ordering patients; but he could discourse somewhat, on
occasion, as the reader may find out.
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