And the Corporal slowly retired, turning as he went to look back towards the bed, and evidently going with reluctance.
“Is it fever?” asked the sick man, in a faint but unfaltering accent.
“It's a kind of cerebral congestion,—a matter of them membranes that's over the brain, with, of course, febrilis generalis.”
The accentuation of these words, marked as it was by the strongest provincialism of the peasant, attracted the sick man's attention, and he bent upon him a look at once searching and severe.
“What are you—who are you?” cried he, angrily.
“What I am is n't so aisy to say; but who I am is clean beyond me.”
“Are you a doctor?” asked the sick man, fiercely.
“I'm afear'd I'm not, in the sense of a gradum Universitatis,—a diplomia; but sure maybe Paracelsus himself just took to it, like me, having a vocation, as one might say.”
“Ring that bell,” said the other, peremptorily.
And Billy obeyed without speaking.