With his russet breeches, which descended over his handsome legs into boots so lustrous and pliant I longed to touch and crush them in my hands, he wore a checked and belted red-brown jacket and a maroon silk ascot, and upon his head, a green hat grizzled with silvery veins and proclaiming its continental origin by a gamsbart sportively stuck in the band. It was no wonder that the old ladies at the Hotel Barstow, too old to be the object of his lascivious eyes, found him charming and said he “cut a fine figure.” They admired his apparel and said that too often a physician tends to resemble his successor, the mortician. His other suits were of fine materials, all double-breasted and of a cut which did not vary through the years, yet always seemed to be at the peak of fashion. And while the colors and the patterns of the stripes or checks were conservative, the accessory trappings were of the liveliest declensions, being the racing lifeblood of the subdued carcass: neckties (or cravats) of orange silk and crimson wool, printed challis, dotted China silk, pongee, fortified linen, diapered or imprinted with arabesques or stripes or hexagons. His handkerchief and his muffler, if he wore one, matched or complemented the tie as did his socks and the band in his hat. And carrying to its uttermost his nice feeling for detail, he even had alternative spectacles which today, to go with his riding togs, were horn-rimmed, but tomorrow, with blue serge would be rimless octagons, and the next day, if the fancy struck him to dress for dinner and go into Boston, would be a pince-nez with a black ribbon and mother-of-pearl nose pieces.

Dr. Galbraith did not seem to recognize me, though once or twice he looked in my direction as I lingered in the room, studying the announcements of Civil Service examinations and the photographs of coarse, unshaven rascals with prices on their heads for the robbery of banks or the kidnapping of children. I wished to speak with him but hesitated in the presence of the postmaster who was still regarding him with the frankest inquisitiveness.

He was about to leave and I prepared to follow him, but the postmaster, perhaps in the intention of keeping him there a little longer so that he might continue his investigation, bawled, “Doctor, what can a person do for the bloat? Seems like every meal I get all bloated up afterward.”

The doctor wheeled about. “What a thing to say,” he spluttered, “in front of a lady,” and he motioned toward me, “whose brother has just died.”

The man gaped stupidly behind his bars. “Well, bless your heart, hasn’t she ever heard of the bloat? I’m real sorry to hear the bad news, but I don’t see I gave her any reason to be peeved.”