Owen self-confidently. With nervous, tobacco-stained fingers he twisted and pointed one end of his black moustache, and became aware that the young girl was watching him covertly.
"There don't seem to be too many of us doctors here," he went on, "and from all accounts Lelever is very much behind the times. There ought to be a good opening, I should think, for a little new life, eh? A little new blood?"
His voice touched an anxious note. The necessity of beginning to earn something pressed upon him. But Mrs. Le Messurier's reply was not reassuring.
"Ah, my good! Doctor Lelever is, maybe, old-fashioned—I don't know nothing about that—but he is very much thought of. He is very safe, and he has attended us all. My poor boy John, who died of the consumption in '67; and my daughter Agnes's mother, whom we lost when Freddy was born; and my dear husband"—her knotted fingers went up to fondle mechanically the glazed tomb and willow-tree—"and poor Thomas Allez, my son-in-law, who went in '87."
Her dates came with all the readiness of constant reference. She entered into details of the various complaints, the various remedies, the reasons they had failed.
Owen's face wore that smooth mask of sympathetic attention with which the profession equips every medical man, but he was embittered by the praises of Le Lièvre, and drawing the two ends of his moustache into his mouth he chewed them vexedly.
His discontented glance fell upon the young girl. A sudden pink overflowed her cheeks. He pointed his moustache again, smiled a little, and let his dark eyes fix hers with an amused complacency. He saw he had made an impression. She blushed a warmer rose, and looked away.
He wondered whether she talked the same broken English hergrandmother
