“I want you to come with me to meet Doctor Miles at a confinement at once.”
“How far?” shrieked the irascible voice.
“The New North Road, Hoxton.”
“My consultation fee is three guineas, payable at the time.”
“All right,” shouted Johnson. “You are to bring a bottle of A. C. E. mixture with you.”
“All right! Wait a bit!”
Five minutes later an elderly, hard-faced man, with grizzled hair, flung open the door. As he emerged a voice from somewhere in the shadows cried:
“Mind you take your cravat, John,” and he impatiently growled something over his shoulder in reply.
The consultant was a man who had been hardened by a life of ceaseless labor, and who had been driven, as so many others have been, by the needs of his own increasing family to set the commercial before the philanthropic side of his profession. Yet beneath his rough crust he was a man with a kindly heart.
“We don’t want to break a record,” said he, pulling up and panting after attempting to keep up with Johnson for five minutes. “I would go quicker if I could, my dear sir, and I quite sympathize with your anxiety, but really I can’t manage it.”