“I am sure I thought you did,” said Lady Verner.  “I supposed it to have been a prearranged thing between you and Jan.  Lionel,” looking up into his face with an expression of care, and lowering her voice, “but for that hundred and forty pounds, I don’t see how I could have gone on.  You had been very liberal to me, but somehow debt upon debt seemed to come in, and I was growing quite embarrassed.  Jan’s money set me partially straight.  My dear—­as you see you are no ‘burden,’ as you call it, you will give up this London scheme, will you not, and remain on?”

“I suppose I must,” mechanically answered Lionel, who seemed buried in thought.

He did suppose he must.  He was literally without money, and his intention had been to ask the loan of a twenty-pound note from generous Jan, to carry him to London, and keep him there while he turned himself about, and saw what could be done.  How could he ask Jan now?  There was little doubt that Jan had left himself as void of ready cash as he, Lionel, was.  Dr. West’s was not a business where patients went and paid their guinea fee, two or three dozen patients a day.  Dr. West (or Jan for him) had to doctor his patients for a year, and send in his modest bill at the end of it, very often waiting for another year before the bill was paid.  Sibylla on his hands, and no money, he did not see how he was to get to London.

“But just think of it,” resumed Lady Verner.  “Jan’s savings for nearly three years of practice to amount only to a hundred and forty pounds!  I questioned him pretty sharply, asking him what on earth he could have done with his money, and he acknowledged that he had given a good deal away.  He said Miss West had borrowed some, the doctor kept her so short; then Jan, it seems, forgot to put down the expenses of the horse to the general account, and that had to come out of his pocket.  Another thing he acknowledged having done.  When he finds the poor can’t conveniently pay their bills, he crosses it off in the book, and furnishes the money himself.  He has not common-sense, you know, Lionel; and never had.”

Lionel caught up his hat, and went out in the moment’s impulse, seeking Jan.  Jan was in the surgery alone, making up pills, packing up medicines, answering callers; doing, in fact, Master Cheese’s work.  Master Cheese had a headache, and was groaning dismally in consequence in an arm-chair, in front of Miss Deb’s sitting-room fire, and sipping some hot elder wine, with sippets of toast in it, which he had assured Miss Deb was a sovereign specific, though it might not be generally known, to keep off the sickness.

“Jan,” said Lionel, going straight up, and grasping him by the hand; “what am I to say to you?  I did not know, until ten minutes ago, what it is that you are doing for me.”

Jan put down a pill-box he held, and looked at Lionel.  “What am I doing for you?” he asked.

“I speak of this money that I find you have handed to my mother.  Of the money you have undertaken to hand to her.”