“My, that’s never our Jonathan!” cried the lady.
“Don’t he look well?” asked Mr. Lock, with enthusiasm. “I reckon he’s more than half cured by now.”
“But—but this is ever so much bigger than our dear old Jonathan,” objected the lady. “Bigger and—and stouter.”
“That’s the treatment and diet I give ’im,” explained Mr. Lock. “It always ’as that effect on my patients. It puts on weight and improves their coat wonderful. Ah, I never grudged him nothing! The best of everything he’s had, even though I’ve ’ad to go short myself sometimes.”
“Well, he certainly is wonderfully improved,” said the lady, gratefully. “I shouldn’t ’ardly have ever known ’im. And in that short time, too! ’Owever did you do it, young man?”
“Trade secret,” said Mr. Lock, promptly.
“He—he don’t seem to take much notice of me,” said the lady, a little disappointedly. “Before he went away, when I used to speak to him, ’e’d look back at me and mew like a Christian; but now ’e don’t even seem to like me ’olding ’im.”
“You’re a bit strange to ’im at present, that’s all,” Mr. Lock assured her. “’E’ll be loving and affectionate to you again very soon. And, as for ’is fits—well, I can take my solemn gospel oath that he ain’t even had a attempt at one all the time ’e’s been in my charge.”
“How splendid!” cried Mrs. Golightly. “I’m sure he looks heaps better. You must ’ave took good care of ’im.”
“I did,” Mr. Lock asserted. “Never let him out of my sight for a single moment. Brushed and combed him three times a day, fed him on tid-bits, give him his physic regular with an oyster after it to take the taste of it out of his mouth, and used to sit by ’is side at night till he fell off to sleep.”