“As you observe, it is utterly impossible,” rejoined Sir Horace, with one of his own dubious smiles; and then, in a manner more natural, resumed: “We public men have the sad necessity of concealing the sufferings on which others trade for sympathy. We must never confess to an ache or a pain, lest it be rumored that we are unequal to the fatigues of office; and so is it that we are condemned to run the race with broken health and shattered frame, alleging all the while that no exertion is too much, no effort too great for us.”
“And maybe, after all, it's that very struggle that makes you more than common men,” said Billy. “There's a kind of irritability that keeps the brain at stretch, and renders it equal to higher efforts than ever accompany good everyday health. Dyspepsia is the soul of a prose-writer, and a slight ossification of the aortic valves is a great help to the imagination.”
“Do you really say so?” asked Sir Horace, with all the implicit confidence with which he accepted any marvel that had its origin in medicine.
“Don't you feel it yourself, sir?” asked Billy. “Do you ever pen a reply to a knotty state-paper as nately as when you've the heartburn?—are you ever as epigrammatic as when you're driven to a listen slipper?—and when do you give a minister a jobation as purtily as when you are laborin' under a slight indigestion? Not that it would sarve a man to be permanently in gout or the colic; but for a spurt like a cavalry charge, there's nothing like eatin' something that disagrees with you.”
“An ingenious notion,” said the diplomatist, smiling.
“And now I 'll take my lave,” said Billy, rising. “I'm going out to gather some mountain-colchicum and sorrel, to make a diaphoretic infusion; and I've to give Master Charles his Greek lesson; and blister the colt,—he's thrown out a bone spavin; and, after that, Handy Care's daughter has the shakin' ague, and the smith at the forge is to be bled,—all before two o 'dock, when 'the lord' sends for me. But the rest of the day, and the night too, I'm your honor's obaydient.”
And with a low bow, repeated in a more reverential man-ner at the door, Billy took his leave and retired.
CHAPTER X. A DISCLOSURE
“Have you seen Upton?” asked Glencore eagerly of Harcourt as he entered his bedroom.