"Stay, Evelyn," said Allen. "This is the night when unlicked cubs do
disport themselves in our precincts. A mistaken sense of
philanthropy has led my mother to make this house the fortnightly
salon bleu of St. Thomas's. But there's a pipe at your service in my
room."
"Dr. Medlicott is coming," said Babie, who had tarried behind the
Johns, "and perhaps Mr. Grinstead, and we are sure to have Mr.
Esdale's photographs. It is never all students, medical or
otherwise. Much better than Allen's smoke, Cecil."
"I am coming of course," he said. "I was only waiting for the
Infanta."
It may be doubted whether the photographs, Dr. Medlicott, or even
Jock were the attraction. He was much more fond of using his
privilege of dropping in when the family were alone, than of finding
himself in the midst of what an American guest had called Mrs.
Brownlow's surprise parties. They were on regular evenings, but no
one knew who was coming, from scientific peers to daily governesses,
from royal academicians to medical students, from a philanthropic
countess to a city missionary. To listen to an exposition of the
microphone, to share in a Shakespeare reading, or worse still, in a
paper game, was, in the Captain's eyes, such a bore that he generally
had only haunted Collingwood Street on home days and on Sundays,
when, for his mother's sake and his own, an exception was made in his
favour.
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