Sidwell's the types were limited to three little
eccentric professors, and the plaster gods in the art studio. But for the
gods she might just as well have lived in a nunnery, for whenever Miss
Quincey thought of a man she thought of something like Louisa's husband,
Andrew Mackinnon, who spoke with a strong Scotch accent, and wore flannel
shirts with celluloid collars, and coats that hung about him all anyhow.
But Dr. Cautley was not in the least like Andrew Mackinnon. He had a
distinguished voice; his clothes fitted him to perfection; and his linen,
irreproachable itself, reproved her silently.
Her eyes left him suddenly and wandered about the room. She was full of
little tremors and agitations; she wished that the towels wouldn't look
so much like dish-cloths; she credited him with powers of microscopic
observation, and wondered if he had noticed the stain on the carpet and
the dust on the book-shelves, and if he would be likely to mistake the
quinine tabloids for vulgar liver pills, or her bottle of hair-wash for
hair-dye. Once released from its unnatural labours, her mind returned
instinctively to the trivial as to its home. She glanced at her hat,
perched conspicuously on the knob of the looking-glass, and a dim sense
of its imperfections came over her and vanished as it came.
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