Nugent, waiting in the corridor, threw the door open for us. "Isn't he delightful?" Nugent whispered behind me, pointing to his friend. Escorted by Herr Grosse, we made a magnificent entry into the room. Our German doctor had done Lucilla good already. The examination was relieved of all its embarrassments and its terrors at the outset. Herr Grosse had made her laugh--Herr Grosse had set her completely at her ease.
Mr. Sebright and Oscar were talking together in a perfectly friendly way when we returned to the sitting-room. The reserved Englishman appeared to have his attraction for the shy Oscar. Even Mr. Sebright was struck by Lucilla; his cold face lit up with interest when he was presented to her.
He placed a chair for her in front of the window. There was a warmth in his tone which I had not heard yet, when he begged her to be seated in that place. She took the chair. Mr. Sebright thereupon drew back, and bowed to Herr Grosse, with a courteous wave of his hand towards Lucilla which signified, "You first!"
Herr Grosse met this advance with a counter-wave of the hand, and a vehement shake of his shock-head, which signified, "I couldn't think of such a thing!"
"Pardon me," entreated Mr. Sebright. "As my senior, as a visitor to England, as a master in our art."
Herr Grosse responded by regaling himself with three pinches of snuff in rapid succession--a pinch as senior, a pinch as visitor to England, a pinch as master in the art. An awful pause followed. Neither of the surgeons would take precedence of the other. Nugent interfered.
"Miss Finch is waiting," he said. "Come, Grosse, you were first presented to her. You examine her first."
Herr Grosse took Nugent's ear between his finger and thumb, and gave it a good-humoured pinch. "You clever boys!" he said. "You have the right word always at the tips of your tongue." He waddled to Lucilla's chair; and stopped short with a scandalized look. Oscar was bending over her, and whispering to her with her hand in his. "Hey! what?" cried Herr Grosse.
"Is this a third surgeon-optic? What, sir! you treat young Miss's eyes by taking hold of young Miss's hand? You are a Quack. Get out!" Oscar withdrew--not very graciously. Herr Grosse took a chair in front of Lucilla, and removed his spectacles. As a short-sighted man, he had necessarily excellent eyes for all objects which were sufficiently near to him. He bent forward, with his face close to Lucilla's, and parted her eyelids alternately with his finger and thumb; peering attentively, first into one eye, then into the other.
It was a moment of breathless interest. Who could say what an influence on her future life might be exercised by this quaint kindly uncouth little foreign man? How anxiously we watched those shaggy eyebrows, those piercing goggle eyes! And, oh, heavens, how disappointed we were at the first result! Lucilla suddenly gave a little irrepressible shudder of disgust. Herr Grosse drew back from her, and glared at her benignantly with his diabolical smile.
"Aha!" he said. "I see what it is. I snuff, I smoke, I reek of tobaccos.
The pretty Miss smells me. She says in her inmost heart--Ach Gott, how he stink!"
Lucilla burst into a fit of laughter. Herr Grosse, unaffectedly amused on his side, grinned with delight, and snatched her handkerchief out of her apron-pocket. "Gif me scents," said this excellent German. "I shall stop up her nose with her handkerchiefs. So she will not smell my tobacco-stinks--all will be nice-right again--we shall go on." I gave him some lavender-water from a scent-bottle on the table. He gravely drenched the handkerchief with it, and popped it suddenly on Lucilla's nose. "Hold him there, Miss. You cannot for the life of you smell Grosse now. Goot!
We may go on again."
He took a magnifying glass out of his waistcoat pocket, and waited till Lucilla had fairly exhausted herself with laughing. Then the examination--so cruelly grotesque in itself, so terribly serious in the issues which it involved--resumed its course: Herr Grosse glaring at his patient through his magnifying glass; Lucilla leaning back in the chair, holding the handkerchief over her nose.
A minute, or more, passed--and the ordeal of the examination came to an end.
Herr Grosse put back his magnifying glass with a grunt which sounded like a grunt of relief, and snatched the handkerchief away from Lucilla.