'Six,' said the doctor. 'I'll just fix you up, to begin with,' he turned to me.
After I had been duly fixed up ('This'll help you to sleep, and THIS'll placate your "god",' said the doctor), I saw to my intense surprise that another 'evening' was to be instantly superimposed on the 'evening' at Mr Colclough's. The doctor and Mr Brindley carefully and deliberately lighted long cigars, and sank deeply into immense arm-chairs; and so I imitated them as well as I could in my feeble southern way. We talked books. We just simply enumerated books without end, praising or damning them, and arranged authors in neat pews, like cattle in classes at an agricultural show. No pastime is more agreeable to people who have the book disease, and none more quickly fleets the hours, and none is more delightfully futile.
Ages elapsed, and suddenly, like a gun discharging, Mr Brindley said—
'We must go!'
Of all things that happened this was the most astonishing.
We did go.
'By the way, doc.,' said Mr Brindley, in the doctor's wide porch, 'I forgot to tell you that Simon Fuge is dead.'
'Is he?' said the doctor.
'Yes. You've got a couple of his etchings, haven't you?'
'No,' said the doctor. 'I had. But I sold them several months ago.'