The next minute he was running to the telegraph office for her.
At the gate he found Skinner hanging about, and asked him hurriedly how the calamity had happened. Skinner said Captain Dodd had fallen down senseless in the street, and he had passed soon after, recognised him, and brought him home: “I have paid the men, sir; I wouldn't let them ask the ladies at such a time.”
“Oh, thank you! thank you, Skinner! I will repay you; it is me you have obliged.” And Alfred ran off with the words in his mouth.
Skinner looked after him and muttered: “I forgot him. It is a nice mess. Wish I was out of it.” And he went back, hanging his head, to Alfred's father.
Mr. Osmond met him. Skinner turned and saw him enter the villa.
Mr. Osmond came softly into the room, examined Dodd's eye, felt his pulse, and said he must be bled at once.
Mrs. Dodd was averse to this. “Oh, let us try everything else first,” said she. But Osmond told her there was no other remedy: “All the functions we rely on in the exhibition of medicines are suspended.”
Dr. Short now drove up, and was ushered in.
Mrs. Dodd asked him imploringly whether it was necessary to bleed. But Dr. Short knew his business too well to be entrapped into an independent opinion where a surgeon had been before him. He drew Mr. Osmond apart, and inquired what he had recommended: this ascertained, he turned to Mrs. Dodd and said, “I advise venesection or cupping.”
“Oh, Dr. Short, pray have pity and order something less terrible. Dr. Sampson is so averse to bleeding.”