'And Henry Ward has it!' repeated Mary, looking so much dismayed that her father laughed, saying—
'What, Mary thinks when it comes to fevers being so audacious as to lay hold of the doctors, it is time that they should be put a stop to.'
'He seems to have petted it and made much of it,' said Ethel; 'so no wonder! What could have possessed him?'
'Just this, Ethel; and it is only human nature after all. This young lad comes down, as Master Tom will do some day, full of his lectures and his hospitals, and is nettled and displeased to find his father content to have Spencer or me called in the instant anything serious is the matter.'
'But you are a physician, papa,' said Mary.
'No matter for that, to Mr. Henry I'm an old fogie, and depend upon it, if it were only the giving a dose of salts, he would like to have the case to himself. These poor creatures were parish patients, and I don't mean that his treatment was amiss. Spencer is right, it was an atmosphere where there was no saving anyone, but if he had not been so delighted with his own way, and I had known what was going on, I'd have got the Guardians and the Town Council and routed out the place. Seventeen cases, and most of them the worst form!'
'But what was Mr. Ward about?
'"Says I to myself, here's a lesson for me;
This man's but a picture of what I shall be,"
'when Master Tom gets the upper hand of me,' returned Dr. May. 'Poor Ward, who has run to me in all his difficulties these thirty years, didn't like it at all; but Mr. Henry was so confident with his simple epidemic, and had got him in such order, that he durst not speak.'
'And what brought it to light at last?'