 of practitioners, and be a
constant injury to the public, if their only mode of getting paid for their work
was by their making out long bills for draughts, boluses, and mixtures.
    »It is in that way that hard-working medical men may come to be almost as
mischievous as quacks,« said Lydgate, rather thoughtlessly. »To get their own
bread they must overdose the king's lieges; and that's a bad sort of treason,
Mr. Mawmsey - undermines the constitution in a fatal way.«
    Mr. Mawmsey was not only an overseer (it was about a question of outdoor pay
that he was having an interview with Lydgate), he was also asthmatic and had an
increasing family: thus, from a medical point of view, as well as from his own,
he was an important man; indeed, an exceptional grocer, whose hair was arranged
in a flame-like pyramid, and whose retail deference was of the cordial,
encouraging kind - jocosely complimentary, and with a certain considerate
abstinence from letting out the full force of his mind. It was Mr. Mawmsey's
friendly jocoseness in questioning him which had set the tone of Lydgate's
reply. But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it
multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go
wrong.
    Lydgate smiled as he ended his speech, putting his foot into the stirrup,
and Mr. Mawmsey laughed more than he would have done if he had known who the
king's lieges were, giving his »Good morning, sir, good morning, sir,« with the
air of one who saw everything clearly enough. But in truth his views were
perturbed. For years he had been paying bills with strictly-made items, so that
for every half-crown and eighteenpence he was certain something measurable had
been delivered. He had done this with satisfaction, including it among his
responsibilities as a husband and father, and regarding a longer bill than usual
as a dignity worth mentioning. Moreover, in addition to the massive benefit of
the drugs to »self and family,« he had enjoyed the pleasure of forming an acute
judgment as to their immediate effects, so as to give an intelligent statement
for the guidance of Mr. Gambit - a practitioner just a little lower in status
than Wrench or Toller, and especially esteemed as an accoucheur, of whose
ability Mr. Mawmsey had the poorest opinion on all other points, but in
doctoring, he was wont to say in an undertone, he placed Gambit above any of
