“ MRS. GLUCKSTEIN
It was one of those dull, dishonest days which open with a promise of rain and keep on promising all the time. The mothers and aunts in Doctor Brink's dispensary sat in couples, brooding silently.
Now and then, at long intervals, somebody would express herself in a rich, resentful snuffle or a limp oath; but, generally speaking, one just sat still and got damper. And those ladies who by virtue of seniority were from time to time admitted into the consulting-room carried their langour with them. ”

“ Brink," she said, "how simply charming it is to meet you! One has so often read your bright little speeches about this shocking poverty. One simply yearns to do something. How one envies you your strength, your power, your splendid opportunities. How you must revel in your work here, Doctor! It must be simply charming!"
"About as charming," said the doctor, "as keeping pigs and sleeping with them."
The beautiful philanthropist broke into appreciative titters. "Pigs, Doctor!" she cried, with the archest look. "Pigs! He! he! And you call yourself a Socialist! ”

“ I begged the doctor to restrain his gift of humour. "Where is Baffin? What is he?" I demanded again.
"Oh," said the doctor, "if you are really commonplace enough to be interested in a man himself when you ask, "who he is," I will expound this Baffin to you. He has red hair and freckles, and he is one of the Leicestershire Baffins, and he hates the Leicestershire Baffins, and he is a youth of great talents, who is supposed to live here, but at present he is reforming the Royal Academy, and reviving poster art in England. ”

“ Then, drawing Emma gently from the wall, he placed his arm about her, and whispered something in a voice which aspired clumsily to be hopeful. Now that the girl was facing me, I could see that she did not carry a child, as I had at first supposed. It was merely an end of shawl which she carried—a rude sort of nest or pocket, pressed close to her bosom, as if in waiting for some tender burden.
"Come along 'ome, ole girl," the young man urged. "What's the use o' dawdlin'?"
"Go away!" replied the woman. "Leave a girl in peace, can't you? I'm waitin' for my baby. ”

“ Stimulated and cheered by the thought of this exciting prospect, Prudence fell upon the muffins. Her appetite, at any rate, was thoroughly grown up, and, having performed a veritable gastronomic feat, she curled herself up on the musty old curtain which carpeted Baffin's "throne" and—went to sleep.
Whereupon, the unauthorised kittens—they crawled everywhere—you found them in the milk jug—promptly employed the skirts of Prudence as a playground.
"Move those kittens away, like a good chap," Baffin called out to me. "They'll worry Prudence when she wakes up. Hates the silly beggars, you know." ”

“ Do you hear it, Baffin? One thousand nine hundred and forty-nine sixpences. Does this compete with literature, young man? Does it equal the material gains of your art, Mr. Baffin? Nineteen hundred sixpences, James, my dear, nineteen hundred and forty-nine. All screwed out of the working man. Damn the working man. What's he made for? Where's that bottle of Burgundy?"
The doctor, in this mood, presents an absurdly human appearance. ”

“ A period of wild excitement followed, while we all helped James to comb her hair and climb into the speckled pinafore of a blameless life. "I will do my best," said James; "but I am sure I shall forget and call you 'Fatty.' Is it father or papa to-day?"
"Her ladyship," responded the doctor, "is, I think, the kind of ladyship who would prefer papa. Let her do all the good she wants to. Mention that we've got a curate here. Webb and I will come up in a little while and collect the cheque. Don't harrow her. She's the kind of ladyship who likes to do business with respectable poverty." ”

“ Strudwicke-Moses, who, by this time, was seriously alarmed.
"For the same reason which causes you to despise them," explained the doctor.
"But," protested Mrs. Strudwicke-Moses, "I love the dear things! They are so unfortunate."
"I believe," declared the doctor, "that our feeling is identical; but, even to oblige a lady, I cannot call it love.
"When," he continued, "a large number of stout men are pleased to starve and shiver for no other reason than that I desire a trout-stream, I consider them to be worthy neither of love nor pity. ”

“ One's husband cannot be expected to approve of such extremes as that. But one need not be a Socialist in order to feel sorry for them. Now, need one, Doctor? But when one is a woman, it is all so difficult. Oh, Doctor, can one do nothing? ”

“ When, a little later, we went upstairs, James was sedately sipping more tea from a cup. And her ladyship was talking, and James was viewing her with eyes of innocence and wonder. "I quite agree with you," said James, "that alpaca is the most sensible thing for people of that class."
Baffin was dragged in, and the doctor loudly proclaimed him as being of the Leicestershire Baffins, and her ladyship suddenly looked interested and human.
"You are an artist?" she said. "How very charming!" ”

“ Suffering humanity pays for that, you know. The silly idiots crowd in here by the hundred, bringing bottles which I fill with a weak solution of picric-acid and water. For this service they pay me sixpence and go away, believing themselves cured. It is one of the simplest methods of acquiring trout-streams which has ever been invented."
"I don't believe you, Doctor," asserted the lady. "Men like you, if money is their only thought, can get it by easier means than coming out here to rob the poor poor."
"I could rob the poor in a pleasanter neighbourhood, of course," admitted Doctor Brink. ”

“ They only supply the poor with money—they merely give of their abundance. Now you, and men like you (pardon my mentioning it, but I cannot help pointing this out to you) you give yourselves. You actually see and touch the poor things, even the most unpleasant of them."
"That's true," admitted Doctor Brink, with the respectful air of one who has been introduced to a new and important truth. ”

“ Bovingdon Street has many graces; but gifts of mind are not conspicuous amongst them. The capacity for giving evidence is possibly an instinct and possibly an art, and even more possibly it is both. But it is a certain thing that working a mangle makes you stupid. Which, of course, accounts for Mrs. Rafferty.
She called in yesterday—a little, jug-shaped woman, having a limp fringe and mysterious pains. She is a fine example of the sort of temptation which is always luring on the Doctor to display his horrible power of crispness. She is a fine example of the Bovingdon Street matron. ”

“ Then there rang out another sound—the voice of auntie, raised in raucous laughter. "My Gawd!" she cried, "'ow's that for a beauty?"
Mr. Potter shook the drowsy, silent child upon his knee. "Cheer up, Joe," he cried; "you're cut out now, me lad. You ain't the baby any more. D'jeer? Then gimme a bleedin' kiss."
Auntie appeared for a moment in the doorway. "Boy," said she.
Mr. Potter's joy was, for a moment, modified by this announcement. "It was a gel I wished for," he said. "It was a gel we wanted." He rubbed his chin upon young Joseph's yellow head. ”

“ Be honest. Be a man. Stand up like an English gentleman. Say what you feel about them. Do not fear to shock my virgin ears because——"
"How old are you, James?" I hoped that my simple, honest, obvious wonder would disarm the question of its point.
The lady gazed upon me with an air of bland surprise. "That is a question," she answered, with great gravity, "which I never discuss. It isn't fair to Fatty. Do sit down. Was it sugar and no milk, you said; or milk and no sugar? And will you have hysterics if Sunshine joins the circle? He always breakfasts with his mother. ”

“ MILK
I have long been interested in Mr. Binney. He is the only milkman I have ever seen who looks any different from other milkmen. His very voice is different; for, whereas other milkmen are sudden and shrill of utterance, Mr. Binney has cultivated a profounder, more scholarly method, and he has a voice of deep bass quality.
I have sat at an upper window of the Bovingdon Street dispensary and watched this tradesman closely when he has been conducting milkcans to the houses opposite. ”

“ Baffin. Down't be angry, Mr. Baffin. I am a wicked girl, I know I am, an' I will keep still: an' Gawd knows what's to become of me when my mother dies, an' everybody 'ates me, an' I am un'eppy."
The remainder of Prudence's observations were mingled with the sound of noisy sobs.
Mr. Baffin, that eminent painter, put down his palette and brush. "I'll wait," he said, "until you are dry again."
"Down't be engry with me, Mr. Baffin," moaned Prudence. "I'll be a good gel now—I will, reely—if on'y yew wown't be engry with me."
"Very well, then," answered Baffin. "You can begin to be a good girl now. ”

“ You cannot expect a married woman to be very cheerful at the best of times, and when there is the place to tidy and the rent man expected, and the children will soon be coming home for their slabs and what not, and you have slipped out just for half a tick to get that dizzy feeling seen to, it is more than usually dull to be sat in a row with twenty other females, similarly cursed—some of them having babies at their breasts or little squalling things what hold fast to their skirts, and the place that stuffy and all, and a stink of iodine coming out of the doctor's room. ”

“ Infirmary, forsooth! Why, even the respectable married ones would rather pawn their wedding rings than 'lie in' on a public bed. A woman at home is a woman at home, even though she talks through the mouth of a midwife; but when a woman is in hospital William's wages and the marble ornaments are both at William's mercy. And so the women stop at home and call in Brink—Brink—the sixpenny doctor. ”

“ A drayman must 'ave beer, Doctor."
"A drayman must have nothing of the sort, Mrs. Skelp. What a drayman must have is plenty of rump steak and jam roll and a quiet life and a jolly time. Why do you want him to have this beer? Are you any better off when he does have it? The more he spends on beer the less there is for the home, you know."
"Mine ain't that sort," asserted Mrs. Skelp, with a touch of asperity in her tone: "I keep Skelp's money. What he wants—is beer. The man's got that down-'earted 'e isn't fit to live with. A drayman must 'ave beer."
Dr. Brink inspected his watch again. ”

“ The morning patients have an absent-minded look—a dull, foreboding look, as of people who are too busy really to enjoy themselves. Some of them, also, are accompanied by their button-holes or other objects of light and profitable home employment, at which they work with assiduity whilst waiting for the doctor's call. ”

“ You may suppose that the waiting-room wears then a strange and wistful air, for the men being absent, with their hoarse, funereal pleasantries, and the shuffling young boys being absent too, and the girls likewise, having carried their titters and squeaks to the factory, there is not much to amuse folk in the waiting-room. ”

“ Every pre-ordained son of a witch of a bricklayer within hail of the parish has broken his bandy leg, and called me in to set it. Every single woman that ever worked in a jam factory is 'expecting' to-morrow, and there isn't a pint of milk or a handful of coal between six of 'em. I haven't slept a wink since yesterday morning, or sat down since last night. I haven't had a wash since Monday, or a drink since last April. I'm fed up."
This speech was listened to by James with polite attention, but perfect calm. Aunt Isobel, upon the other hand, was unable to suppress a loudish shudder. ”

“ I consider them to deserve what may be termed a helping foot, and when they have paid for my trout-stream I shall jolly well see that they get it."
Said the Hon. Mrs. Strudwicke-Moses, as she rose to her feet—
"I must confess, Doctor, that your bitterness surprises me. I can't think how anybody could feel angry with the poor dear things. For my part," she added, arranging her furs, "I love them. They are so unfortunate!" ”

“ Brink's infirmary. I figured the tumult as gazing speechlessly upon these curious East End substitutes for Landseer. "What do they think of them?" I asked the doctor.
"They are much amused," said he. We were standing before a pastel when he spoke—a thing of heavy shadows with purple deeps, wherefrom there stood forth dimly the figures of a crippled man and an old sick woman, and the face of a child with brazen eyes. "Out Patients" was the title of this drawing, and it preached of a divine torture. "They are much amused," said the doctor. ”

“ But Wilfered is young and strenuous, and efficient. His heart is in his work. He adds the water to the sugar with extreme exactitude, and, not being versed in the language of pharmacy, he is convinced that not merely the reputation of Dr. Brink, but the very lives of all his patients are bound up in the exact and scrupulous decoction of the liquids committed to his care. But he does not interest himself in distant ships.
For myself, I am sorry that Mr. Gilkes became impossible. I like dumb animals. ”

“ I cried. "And he calls himself a lover!"
"All men aren't like Baffin and other people, thank goodness," said James disdainfully. "Mr. Grimsdick thinks about the future. But I'd rather go in for rats, I think. There's Baffin, for instance: he never shuts a door after him." ”