“I’d rather be without one, if I can do it,” cried Jan; “and Cheese will be coming on.  Am I to live with ’em?”

“With Deb and Amilly?  Why not?  Poor, unprotected old things, what would they do without you?  And now, Mr. Jan, as that is settled so far, we will sit down, and go further into details.  I know I can depend upon your not mentioning this abroad.”

“If you don’t want me to mention it, you can.  But where’s the harm?”

“It is always well to keep these little arrangements private,” said the doctor.  “Matiss will draw up the deed, and I will take you round and introduce you as my partner.  But there need not be anything said beforehand.  Neither need there be anything said at all about my going away, until I actually go.  You will oblige me in this, Mr. Jan.”

“It’s all the same to me,” said accommodating Jan.  “Whose will be this room, then?”

“Yours, to do as you please with, of course, so long as I am away.”

“I’ll have a turn-up bedstead put in it and sleep here, then,” quoth Jan.  “When folks come in the night, and ring me up, I shall be handy.  It’ll be better than disturbing the house, as is the case now.”

The doctor appeared struck with the proposition.

“I think it would be a very good plan, indeed,” he said.  “I don’t fancy the room’s damp.”

“Not it,” said Jan.  “If it were damp, it wouldn’t hurt me.  I have no time to be ill, I haven’t.  Damp—­Who’s that?”

It was a visitor to the surgery—­a patient of Dr. West’s—­and, for the time, the conference was broken up, not to be renewed until evening.

Dr. West and Jan were both fully occupied all the afternoon.  When business was over—­as much so as a doctor’s business ever can be over—­Jan knocked at the door of this room, where Dr. West again was.

It was opened about an inch, and the face of the doctor appeared in the aperture, peering out to ascertain who might be disturbing him.  The same aperture which enabled him to see out, enabled Jan to see in.

“Why! what’s up?” cried unceremonious Jan.

Jan might well ask it.  The room contained a table, a desk or two, some sets of drawers, and other receptacles for the custody of papers.  All these were turned out, desks and drawers alike stood open, and their contents, a mass of papers, were scattered everywhere.

The doctor could not, in good manners, shut the door right in his proposed new partner’s face.  He opened it an inch or two more.  His own face was purple:  it wore a startled, perplexed look, and the drops of moisture had gathered on his forehead.  That he was not in the most easy frame of mind was evident.  Jan put one foot into the room:  he could not put two, unless he had stepped upon the papers.

“What’s the matter?” asked Jan, perceiving the signs of perturbation on the doctor’s countenance.

“I have had a loss,” said the doctor.  “It’s the most extraordinary thing, but a—­a paper, which was here this morning, I cannot find anywhere.  I must find it!” he added, in ill-suppressed agitation.  “I’d rather lose everything I possess, than lose that.”