“How do, Teddy?” Charlie greeted him. “I’ve just been in to see you at your shop.”
Edwin paused.
“Hello! The Sunday!” he said quietly. And he kept thinking, as his eyes details of Charlie’s raiment, “It’s a bit of luck I’ve got these clothes on.” And he was in fact rather sorry that Charlie probably paid no real attention to clothes. The new suit had caused Edwin to look at everybody’s clothes, had caused him to walk differently, and to put his shoulders back, and to change the style of his collars; had made a different man of Edwin.
“Come in, will you?” Edwin suggested.
They went into the shop together. Stifford smiled at them both, as if to felicitate them on the chance which had brought them together.
“Come in here,” said Edwin, indicating the small office.
“The lion’s , eh?” observed the Sunday.
He, as much as Edwin, was a little tongue-tied and nervous.
“Sit down, will you?” said Edwin, shutting the door. “No, take the arm-chair. I’ll absquatulate on the desk. I’d no idea you were down. When did you come?”
“Last night, last train. Just a freak, you know.”
Two.
They were within a foot of each other in the ebonised . Edwin’s legs were swinging a few inches away from the arm-chair. His hat was at the back of his head, and Charlie’s hat was at the back of Charlie’s head. This was their sole point of resemblance. As Edwin surreptitiously examined the youth who had once been his intimate friend, he experienced the half-sneering of the for the provincial who has become a Londoner. Charlie was changed; even his accent was changed. He and Edwin belonged to different worlds now. They seldom saw the same scenes or thought the same things. But of course they were obliged by to the past to pretend that nothing was changed.
“You’ve not altered much,” said Edwin.
And indeed, when Charlie smiled, he was almost the old Sunday, despite his mannerisms. And there was nothing whatever in his figure or deportment to show that he had lived for several years in France and could in a language whose verbs had four conjugations. After all, he was less formidable than Edwin might have anticipated.
“You have, anyhow,” said Charlie.
Edwin grinned self-consciously.
“I suppose you’ve got this place practically in your own hands now,” said Charlie. “I wish I was on my own, I can tell you that.”
An gesture from Edwin made Charlie lower his voice in the middle of a sentence. The cubicle had the appearance, but not the reality, of being private.
“Don’t you make any mistake,” Edwin murmured. He, who depended on his aunt’s for clothes, the practical ruler of the place! Still he was glad that Charlie supposed that he ruled, even though the supposition might be small-talk. “You’re in that hospital, aren’t you?”
“Bart’s.”
“Bart’s, is it? Yes, I remember. I expect you aren’t thinking of settling down here?”
Charlie was about to reply in accents of : “Not me!” But his natural politeness stayed his tongue. “I hardly think so,” he said. “Too much competition here. So there is everywhere, for the matter of that.” The of the young doctor were already upon Charlie. And yet people may be found who will assert that in those days there was no competition, that competition has been invented during the past ten years.
“You needn’t worry about competition,” said Edwin.
“Why not?”
“Why not, man! Nothing could ever stop you from getting patients—with that smile! You’ll simply walk straight into anything you want.”
“You think so?” Charlie an incredulity, but he was pleased. He had met the same theory in London.
“Well, you didn’t suppose degrees and things had anything to do with it, did you?” said Edwin, smiling a little superiorly. He felt, with pleasure, that he was still older than the Sunday; and it pleased him also to be able thus to utilise ideas which he had formed from observation but which by diffidence and lack of opportunity he had never expressed. “All a patient wants is to be smiled at in the right way,” he continued, growing bolder. “Just look at ’em!”
“Look at who?”
“The doctors here.” He dropped his voice further. “Do you know why the dad’s gone to Heve?”
“Gone to Heve, has he? Left old Who-is-it?”
“Yes. I don’t say Heve isn’t clever, but it’s his look that does the trick for him.”
“You seem to go about noticing things. Any charge?”
Edwin blushed and laughed. Their nervousness was dissipated. Each was
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