Rose and Rose

Fifty years ago, when I was a young medical student, I was in the habit of spending as manyweek-ends as possible at home with my father, to whose practice I was one day to succeed. On a certain Saturday the only other occupants of the railway compartment were an artistand his wife. I knew him to be an artist from certain scraps of his conversation that Ioverheard, but I should have guessed it also on the evidence of his hands and dress. I don'tmean that he wore a black velvet tam-o'-shanter and trousers tight at the ankles, as inplays; but his hands were eloquent, and there was a general careless ease about his tweedsthat suggested the antipodes of any commercial or anxious calling.