"And now I'm all right again?"
"All right! How can you be all right, when you know that your limbs refuse to carry you? All right! why the blood is still beating round your brain with a violence that would destroy any other brain but yours."
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Scatcherd. He was very proud of thinking himself to be differently organised from other men. "Ha! ha! ha! Well, and what am I to do now?"
The whole of the doctor's prescription we will not give at length. To some of his ordinances Sir Roger promised obedience; to others he objected violently, and to one or two he flatly refused to listen. The great stumbling-block was this, that total abstinence from business for two weeks was enjoined; and that it was impossible, so Sir Roger said, that he should abstain for two days.
"If you work," said the doctor, "in your present state, you will certainly have recourse to the stimulus of drink; and if you drink, most assuredly you will die."
"Stimulus! Why do you think I can't work without Dutch courage?"
"Scatcherd, I know that there is brandy in the room at this moment, and that you have been taking it within these two hours."
"You smell that fellow's gin," said Scatcherd.
"I feel the alcohol working within your veins," said the doctor, who still had his hand on his patient's arm.
Sir Roger turned himself roughly in the bed so as to get away from his Mentor, and then he began to threaten in his turn.