Callandar strode across the room and opened a door in the opposite wall.  It led into another room, smaller, with no veranda in front of it, yet with a window looking toward the road and two side windows through which the after flush of sunrise streamed.  Its door opened upon a small stone stoop set in the grass of the front lawn.  The furniture of the room was plain, not to say severe.  Cool matting covered the painted floor, hemstitched curtains of linen scrim hung at the windows.  There was a businesslike desk, a couch, a reclining chair, a stool by the door; another chair, straight and uncompromising, behind the desk.  That was all.

Willits looked around him in a kind of dazed surprise.  “Office!” he kept murmuring. “Office!”

“All rather plain, you see,” said Callandar regretfully.  “But for a beginner with his way to make, not so bad.  My patients, three up to date, quite understand and conceal their commiseration with perfect good breeding.  Also, the room has natural advantages, it is in the nature of an annex, you see, with a door of its own.  Quite cut off from the rest of the house save-for the door by which we entered, the parlour door, which Mrs. Sykes informs me I may lock if I choose although she feels sure that I know her too well to imagine any undue liberties being taken!”

The Button-Moulder with a gesture of despair made as if to sit down upon the nearest chair, but was prevented with kindly firmness by his host.

“Not that chair, please.  It may not be quite dry.  I glued—­”

The voice of the visitor suddenly returned.  It was a very dry voice; threadlike, but determined.

“Then if you will kindly find me a chair which you have not glued I shall sit down and dispose of a few burning thoughts.  Callandar, as soon as you have finished playing the fool—­”

“Consider it finished, old man.”

“Then what does this, all this”—­with a sweeping hand wave—­“mean?  You cannot seriously intend to stay here?”

“Why not?”

“Your question is absurd.”

“No, it isn’t.  Let it sink in.  Why should I not stay here?  Examine the facts.  I am ordered change, rest, interest, good air—­a year at least must elapse before I take up my life again.  I must spend that year somewhere.  Why not here?  It is healthy, high, piney, quiet.  I had become utterly tired of my tramping tour.  All the good I can get from it I have got.  Chance, or whatever you like to call it, leads me to this place.  A place which needs a doctor and which this particular doctor needs.  There is nothing absurd about it.”

The tall man observed his friend in interested silence.  Apparently he required time to adjust his mind to the fact that Callandar was in earnest.  The badinage he brushed aside.

“Then you really intend—­but how about this office?  If it is not a torn-fool office, where does the necessary rest come in?”