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The specialist came. He was a tall, untidily-dressed man, with his hair wild and straggling, as if he had just got out of bed. He was very clever, and very impatient of stupid people, and he seldom met anyone whom he did not think in one way or another intensely stupid.

Mr Clinton, as before, had gone out, but Mrs Clinton did her best to entertain the two doctors. The specialist, who talked most incessantly himself, was extremely impatient of other people’s conversation.

‘Why on earth don’t people see that they’re much more interesting when they hold their tongues than when they speak?’ he was in the habit of saying, and immediately would pour out a deluge of words, emphasising and explaining the point, giving instances of its truth….

‘You must see a lot of strange things, doctor,’ said Mrs Clinton, amiably.

‘Yes,’ answered the specialist.

‘I think it must be very interesting to be a doctor,’ said Mrs Clinton.

‘Yes, yes.’

‘You must see a lot of strange things.’

‘Yes, yes,’ repeated the doctor, and as Mrs Clinton went on complacently, he frowned and drummed his fingers on the table and looked to the right and left. ‘When is the man coming in?’ he asked impatiently.

And at last he could not contain himself.

‘If you don’t mind, Mrs Clinton, I should like to talk to your doctor alone about the case. You can wait in the next room.’

‘I’m sure I don’t wish to intrude,’ said Mrs Clinton, bridling up, and she rose in a dignified manner from her chair. She thought his manners were distinctly queer. ‘But, of course,’ she said to a friend afterwards, ‘he’s a genius, there’s no mistaking it, and people like that are always very eccentric.’

‘What an insufferable woman!’ he began, when the lady had retired, talking very rapidly, only stopping to take an occasional breath. ‘I thought she was going on all night. She’s enough to drive the man mad. One couldn’t get a word in edgeways. Why on earth doesn’t this man come? Just like these people, they don’t think that my time’s valuable. I expect she drinks. Shocking, you know, these women, how they drink!’ And still talking, he looked at his watch for the eighth time in ten minutes.

‘Well, my man,’ he said, as Mr Clinton at last came in, ‘what are you complaining of?… One moment,’ he added, as Mr Clinton was about to reply. He opened his notebook and took out a stylographic pen. ‘Now, I’m ready for you. What are you complaining of?’

‘I’m complaining that the world is out of joint,’ answered Mr Clinton, with a smile.

The specialist raised his eyebrows and significantly looked at the family doctor.

‘It’s astonishing how much you can get by a well-directed question,’ he said to him, taking no notice of Mr Clinton. ‘Some people go floundering about for hours, but, you see, by one question I get on the track.’ Turning to the patient again, he said, ‘Ah! and do you see things?’

‘Certainly; I see you.’

‘I don’t mean that,’ impatiently said the specialist. ‘Distinctly stupid, you know,’ he added to his colleague. ‘I mean, do you see things that other people don’t see?’

‘Alas! yes; I see Folly stalking abroad on a ‘obby ‘orse.’

‘Do you really? Anything else?’ said the doctor, making a note of the fact.

‘I see Wickedness and Vice beating the land with their wings.’

‘Sees things beating with their wings,’ wrote down the doctor.

‘I see misery and un’appiness everywhere.’

‘Indeed!’ said the doctor. ‘Has delusions. Do you think your wife puts things in your tea?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah!’ joyfully uttered the doctor, ‘that’s what I wanted to get at–thinks people are trying to poison him. What is it they put in, my man?’

‘Milk and sugar,’ answered Mr Clinton.

‘Very dull mentally,’ said the specialist, in an undertone, to his colleague. ‘Well, I don’t think we need go into any more details. There’s no doubt about it, you know. That curious look in his eyes, and the smile–the smile’s quite typical. It all clearly points to insanity. And then that absurd idea of giving his money to the poor! I’ve heard of people taking money away from the poor, there’s nothing mad in that; but the other, why, it’s a proof of insanity itself. And then your account of his movements! His giving ice-creams to children. Most pernicious things, those ice-creams! The Government ought to put a stop to them. Extraordinary idea to think of reforming the world with ice-cream! Post-enteric insanity, you know. Mad as a hatter! Well, well, I must be off.’ Still talking, he put on his hat and talked all the way downstairs, and finally talked himself out of the house.

The family doctor remained behind to see Mrs Clinton.

‘Yes, it’s just as I said,’ he told her. ‘He’s not responsible for his actions. I think he’s been insane ever since his illness. When you think of his behaviour since then–his going among those common people and trying to reform them, and his ideas about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, and finally wanting to give his money to the poor–it all points to a completely deranged mind.’

Mrs Clinton heaved a deep sigh. ‘And what do you think ‘ad better be done now?’ she asked.

‘Well, I’m very sorry, Mrs Clinton; of course it’s a great blow to you; but really I think arrangements had better be made for him to be put under restraint.’

Mrs Clinton began to cry, and the doctor looked at her compassionately.

‘Ah, well,’ she said at last, ‘if it must be done, I suppose it ‘ad better be done at once; and I shall be able to save the money after all.’ At the thought of this she dried her tears.

The moral is plain.