“It is,” the doctor admitted.  “It is my fault.  I took you for a person of commonsense, and so I didn’t tell you that two and two make four and a lot more important things of the same sort.  I ought to have told you.  You’ve taken on the new profession of being idle—­it’s essential for you—­but you aren’t treating it seriously.  You have to be a professionally idle man.  Which means that you haven’t got a moment to spare.  When I advised you to try idleness, I didn’t mean you to be idle idly.  That’s worse than useless.  You’ve got to be idle busily.  You aren’t doing half enough.  Do you ever have a Turkish bath?”

“No.  Never could bear the idea of them.”

“Well, you will kindly take two Turkish baths a week.  You can be massaged at the same time.  A Turkish bath is as good as a day’s hunting, as far as exercise goes, but you must have more exercise.  Do you dance?  I see you don’t.  You had better begin dancing.  There is no finer exercise.  I absolutely prescribe it.”

At this juncture Mr. Prohack was rather relieved that the sound of an unaccustomed voice in the hall drew his daughter out of the dining-room.  When she had gone Dr. Veiga went on, in a more confidential tone: 

“There’s another point.  An idle man who really knows his business will visit his tailor’s, his hosier’s, his bootmaker’s, his barber’s much oftener and much more conscientiously than you do.  You’ve got a mind above clothes—­of course.  So have I. I take a wicked pleasure in being picturesquely untidy.  But I’m not a patient.  My life is a great lark.  Yours isn’t.  Yours is serious.  You have now a serious profession, idleness.  Bring your mind down to clothes.  I say this, partly because to be consistently well-dressed means much daily expenditure of time, and partly because really good clothes have a distinctly curative effect on the patient who wears them.  Then again—­”

Mr. Prohack was conscious of a sudden joyous uplifting of the spirit.

“Here!” said he, interrupting Dr. Veiga with a grand gesture.  “Have a cigar.”

“I cannot, my friend.”  Dr. Veiga looked at his watch.

“You must.  Have a corona.”  Mr. Prohack moved to the cigar cabinet which he had recently purchased.

“No.  My next patient is awaiting me in Hyde Park Gardens at this moment.”

“Let him die!” exclaimed Mr. Prohack ruthlessly.  “You’ve got to have a cigar with me.  Look.  I’ll compromise.  I’ll make it a half-corona.  You can charge me as if for another consultation.”

The doctor’s foreign eyes twinkled as he sat down and struck a match.

“You thought I was a quack,” he said maliciously, and maliciously he seemed to intensify his foreign accent.

“I did,” admitted Mr. Prohack with candour.

“So I am,” said Dr. Veiga.  “But I’m a fully qualified quack, and all really good doctors are quacks.  They have to be.  They wouldn’t be worth anything if they weren’t.  Medicine owes a great deal to quacks.”