Publisher's Synopsis
There were two surgeons in the little town of Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, in pretty pastoralMidlandshire, -Mr. Pawlkatt, who lived in a big, new, brazen-faced house in the middle of the queerold High Street; and John Gilbert, the parish doctor, who lived in his own house on the outskirts ofGraybridge, and worked very hard for a smaller income than that which the stylish Mr. Pawlkattderived from his aristocratic patients.John Gilbert was an elderly man, with a young son. He had married late in life, and his wife had diedvery soon after the birth of this son. It was for this reason, most likely, that the surgeon loved hischild as children are rarely loved by their fathers-with an earnest, over-anxious devotion, whichfrom the very first had been something womanly in its character, and which grew with the child'sgrowth. Mr. Gilbert's mind was narrowed by the circle in which he lived. He had inherited his ownpatients and the parish patients from his father, who had been a surgeon before him, and who hadlived in the same house, with the same red lamp over the little old-fashioned surgery-door, for eightand-forty years, and had died, leaving the house, the practice, and the red lamp to his son
