“If you please, ma'am,” said the patient, “it takes me here under my left breest, and runs right to my elbow, it do; and bitter bad 'tis while it do last; chokes me mostly; and I feel as I must die: and if I was to move hand or fut, I think I should die, that I do.”
“Poor woman!” said Mrs. Dodd.
“Oh, she isn't dead yet,” cried Sampson cheerfully. “She'll sell addled eggs over all our tombstones; that is to say, if she minds what I bid her. When was your last spasm?”
“No longer agone that yestereen, ma'am; and so I said to my master, 'The doctor he is due to-morrow, Sally up at Albion tells me; and——'”
“Whist! whist! who cares what you said to Jack, and Jill said to you? What was the cause?”
“The cause! What, of my pain? He says, 'What was the cause?'”
“Ay, the cause. Just obsairve, jintlemen,” said Sampson, addressing imaginary students, “how startled they all are if a docker deviates from profissional habits into sceince, and takes the right eend of the stick for once b' asking for the cause.”
“The cause was the will of God, I do suppose,” said Mrs. Maxley.
“Stuff!” shouted Sampson angrily. “Then why come to mortal me to cure you?”
Alfred put in his oar. “He does not mean the 'final cause;' he means the 'proximate cause.