CHAPTER XII
IN WHICH A PATIENT GROWS CONFIDENTIAL
YOU may often, O most worthy brother-medico, persuade an old trout, even if he is not on the feed, to take a fly, by putting it over him time after time.
He seems to get tired of seeing the same old fly so often, and after following it down the stream many times he will ultimately rise at it, and then there's a fine old splash.
As in this delightful sport, so in my life, I have caught a wary old fish many a time by the above method. Living about two miles from Cromwell Road, in a lonely thoroughfare in the old part of Hammersmith, was one Michael Stone. His house, The Nook (save the word!), was a tumble-down old stone edifice, lying well back from the highway—an ugly, repulsive-looking dwelling in which "spooks," and such like, might well have their being.
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