"Your place as medical officer is just worth nothing, as you know; you'll have been out of pocket by it seven or eight pounds this year, even if no cholera comes."
Tom knew the whole state of the case; but he liked tormenting Heale now and then.
"Well, sir! but if I get turned out next year, in steps that Drew over at Carcarrow Churchtown into my district, and into the best of my practice, too. I wonder what sort of a Poor Law district you were medical officer of, if you don't know yet that that's why we take to the poor."
"My dear sir, I know it, and a good deal more beside."
"Then why go bothering me this way?"
"Why," said Tom, "it's pleasant to have old notions confirmed as often as possible—
"'Life is a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, but now I know it.'
What an ass the fellow must have been who had that put on his tombstone, not to have found it out many a year before he died!"
He went next to Headley the curate, and took little by that move; though more than by any other.
For Frank already believed his doctrines, as an educated London parson of course would; was shocked to hear that they were likely to become fact so soon and so fearfully; offered to do all he could: but confessed that he could do nothing.