"You ban't the whole play, Jack," said Mr. Gollop with much discontent. "You forget yourself, surely. You can't have the King of Egypt and these here other high characters all standing on the stage doing nought while you'm going through these here vagaries."
But Mr. Head stuck to his text.
"We'm here to make 'em laugh," he repeated with bull-dog determination. "And I'll do it if mortal man can do it. Then, when I've took the doctor's stuff, up I gets again and goes on funnier than ever."
"I wouldn't miss it for money, Jack," declared Vivian Baskerville. "Such a clever chap as you be, and none of us ever knowed it. You ought to go for Tom Fool to the riders.[[3]] I lay you'd make tons more money than ever you will to Trowlesworthy Warren."
[[3]] The Riders—a circus.
"By the way, who is to be the Doctor?" asked Ned Baskerville. "'Twasn't settled, Mr. Masterman."
Dennis collapsed blankly.
"By Jove, no! More it was," he admitted, "and I've forgotten all about it. The Doctor's very important, too. We must have him before the next rehearsal. For the present you can read it out of the book, Mark."
Mark Baskerville was prompting, and now, after St. George and the Bear had made a pretence of wrestling, and the Bear had perished with much noise and to the accompaniment of loud laughter, Mark read the Doctor's somewhat arrogant pretensions.
"All sorts of diseases—
Whatever you pleases:
The phthisic, the palsy, the gout,
If the Devil's in, I blow him out.