“In one sense, perfectly so. I like the quietness, the delightful tranquillity, the scenery,—everything, in short, but one circumstance. I 'm afraid these worthy people—whoever they are—want to regard me as a guest. Now I don't know them,—never saw them,—don't care to see them. My Colonel has a liking for all this sort of thing. It has to his mind a character of adventure that amuses him. It would n't in the least amuse me, and so I want to get away.”
“Yes,” repeated Dill, blandly, after him, “wants to get away; desires to change the air.”
“Not at all,” broke in Conyers, peevishly; “no question of air whatever. I don't want to be on a visit. I want an inn. What is this place they tell me of up the river,—Inis—something?”
“Inistioge. M'Cabe's house; the 'Spotted Duck;' very small, very poor, far from clean, besides.”
“Is there nothing else? Can't you think of some other place? For I can't have my servant here, circumstanced as I am now.”
The doctor paused to reply. The medical mind is eminently ready-witted, and Dill at a glance took in all the dangers of removing his patient. Should he transfer him to his own village, the visit which now had to be requited as a journey of three miles and upwards, would then be an affair of next door. Should he send him to Thomastown, it would be worse again, for then he would be within the precincts of a greater than Dill himself,—a practitioner who had a one-horse phaeton, and whose name was written on brass. “Would you dislike a comfortable lodging in a private family,—one of the first respectability, I may make bold to call it?”
“Abhor it!—couldn't endure it! I'm not essentially troublesome or exacting, but I like to be able to be either, whenever the humor takes me.”
“I was thinking of a house where you might freely take these liberties—”
“Liberties! I call them rights, doctor, not liberties! Can't you imagine a man, not very wilful, not very capricious, but who, if the whim took him, would n't stand being thwarted by any habits of a so-called respectable family? There, don't throw up your eyes, and misunderstand me. All I mean is, that my hours of eating and sleeping have no rule. I smoke everywhere; I make as much noise as I please; and I never brook any impertinent curiosity about what I do, or what I leave undone.”
“Under all the circumstances, you had, perhaps, better remain where you are,” said Dill, thoughtfully.