S. R. Crockett

“ Campbell is the victim of a most unfortunate prejudice," he murmured softly, and for a space said no more. It was so still in the room that through the quiet I could hear the tall eight-day clock ticking half-way up the stairs.
He resumed his narrative and his pacing to and fro at the same moment.
"I am," he went on, "at heart of your profession. I have attended all the classes and earned the encomiums of my professors in the hospitals. I stood fairly well in the earlier written examinations, but at my first oral I broke down completely—a kind of aphasia came over me. ”

“ My brother Archie succeeded on a will older by twenty years. But when I lost Ailie, I lost all. Why should she marry a failure? Besides, I truly believe that she loves my brother, at least as well as ever she loved me. It is her nature. ”

“ It is a dull day and something light becomes you. I have ironed your other hat. See that you put it on! Let me look at your cuffs. Mind that you turn down your trousers before you come in sight of the house. ”

“ The doctor, who in the first years of his practice does not think more of the sacredness of his diagnosis than of his married wife and all his family unto cousins six times removed, is not fit to be trusted—not so much as with the administering of one Beecham's pill. ”

“ Come into the garden and have a smoke."
There Mr. Archibald Campbell told me that he had arranged for a sale of the doctor's house and all his effects as soon as possible.
"Better to have it over," he said, "so you had as well bring up a conveyance and cart off all the scientific rubbish you care about. I want all settled up and done with within the month."
He departed the night after the funeral, leaving the funeral expenses unpaid. He was a hasty, though well-meaning young man, and no doubt he forgot. ”

“ But the doctor, if he would be successful, must perforce dress strictly by rule. Sunday and Saturday he must go buttoned up in his well-fitting surtout. His hat must be glossy, no matter what the weather may be (for myself I always kept a spare one in the box of the gig) , and the whole man upon entering a sick-room must bring with him the fragrance of clean linen, good clothes, and personal exactitude. And though naturally a little rebellious at first, I hereby subscribe to the Galloway view of the case.
Nance converted me. ”

“ The Glenkells folk are always in the habit of referring to themselves as a community apart. They may, indeed, in extreme cases include the rest of the United Kingdom—but, as it were, casually. Thus, "If the storm continues it will be a sair winter in Glenkells, and the rest o' the country!" ”