The Doctor's Wife

There were two surgeons in the little town of Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, inpretty pastoral Midlandshire, -Mr. Pawlkatt, who lived in a big, new, brazen-facedhouse in the middle of the queer old High Street; and John Gilbert, the parishdoctor, who lived in his own house on the outskirts of Graybridge, and worked veryhard for a smaller income than that which the stylish Mr. Pawlkatt derived from hisaristocratic patients.John Gilbert was an elderly man, with a young son. He had married late in life, andhis wife had died very soon after the birth of this son. It was for this reason, mostlikely, that the surgeon loved his child as children are rarely loved by their fathers-with an earnest, over-anxious devotion, which from the very first had beensomething womanly in its character, and which grew with the child's growth. Mr.Gilbert's mind was narrowed by the circle in which he lived. He had inherited hisown patients and the parish patients from his father, who had been a surgeonbefore him, and who had lived in the same house, with the same red lamp over thelittle old-fashioned surgery-door, for eight-and-forty years, and had died, leavingthe house, the practice, and the red lamp to his son More