VERNER’S PRIDE.
BY THE AUTHORESS OF “EAST LYNNE.”
CHAPTER IX. DR. WEST’S HOME.
The house of Dr. West was already lighted up. Gas at its front door, gas at its surgery door, gas inside its windows: no habitation in the place was ever so extensively lighted as Dr. West’s. The house was enclosed with iron railings, and on its side—detached—was the surgery. A very low place, this surgery: you had to go down a step or two, and then plunge into a low door. In the time of the last tenant it had been used as a garden-tool house. It was a tolerably large room, and had a tolerably small window, which was in front, next the door. A counter ran along the room at the back, and a table, covered with miscellaneous articles, stood on the right. Shelves were ranged completely round the room aloft, and a pair of steps, used for getting down the jars and bottles, rested in a corner. There was another room behind it, used exclusively by Dr. West.
Seated on the counter, pounding desperately away at something in a mortar, as if his life depended on it, was a peculiar-looking gentleman in shirt-sleeves. Very tall, very thin, with legs and arms that bore the appearance of being too long even for his tall body, great hands and feet, a thin face, dark and red, a thin aquiline nose, black hair, and black prominent eyes that seemed to be always on the stare,—there sat he, his legs dangling and his fingers working. A straightforward, honest, simple fellow looked he, all utility and practicalness—if there is such a word. One, plain in all ways.
It was Janus Verner: never, in the memory of anybody, called anything but “Jan:” second and youngest son of Lady Verner, brother to Lionel.