They determined to bring down a new doctor who
should be both agreeable to them and capable as
a healer and establish him in our very village, not
only as a iofastant attendant upon themselves, but
as a menace and source of annoyance, aud even
loss, to me. But here they were baulked by the
goodness of my friends. One cannot be a doctor
in the same rural neighbourhood all one's hfe, and
succeed a father who also had been there for years
and years, without setting up certain relation-
ships that are thicker than water. I had made no
effort to do so, but simply through being one's
more or less amiable self, and Hking my work
rather than not, I had done so. If I had con-
sciously toiled to be popular, I might have failed ;
but I had just gone on my way, neglected no one,
at any rate not scandalously, spoken my mind
when it was asked for, and hurried, I hope and
beUeve, very few of my neighbours under the turf.
