"Jaw-bone fractured? I'm somewhat in a hurry. Senator Scott's wife, too, was very unwilling I should leave my office—;" and the doctor drew out a Lepine watch, as if his moments were so much gold-dust—as if he had not sat in his leathern chair, week in and week out, watching the spiders catch flies, and wishing he were a spider, and the flies were his patients.
"Jaw-bone broke, ma'am?" he asked, again.
"She is not hurt at all, I tell you," growled Mr. Howe, shaking the rain from his hat, as he stood knee-deep in the tall meadow-grass. "She lost her set of false teeth in the collision, and if you jabber at her till the last day you won't catch her to open her mouth till she gets another set."
"Mr. Howe," said that gentleman's wife, in a muffled voice from behind the handkerchief, "how can you?"
"How can I? I can do any thing, Mrs. Howe. Are not our trunks all emptied into that cursed brook? All that French trumpery spoiled for which you have been draining my pocket all the spring to go to Saratoga. Did I want to come on this journey? Don't I hate journeying? Haven't I been obliged to go a whole day at a time with next to nothing on my stomach? Haven't I been poked in the ribs every fifteen minutes for the conductor to amuse himself by snipping off the ends of my railroad tickets? Don't my head feel as if Dodworth's brass band were playing Yankee Doodle inside of it? Refreshments! Yes—what are the refreshments? A rush round a semicircular counter by all sorts of barbarians—bowls of oysters, scalding hot, and ten minutes to swallow them—tea without milk—coffee without sugar—bread without butter, and unmitigated egg—no pepper—no salt—no nothing, and, seventy-five cents to pay; the whole thing is an outrageous humbug; and now here's this collision, and your false teeth gone, not to mention other things."
Another muffled groan from behind the handkerchief.
"I'll have damages, heavy damages—let me see, there is the teeth, $200."
"Good heaven's, Mr. Howe," shrieked his wife—"you don't mean to mention them to the corporation?"
"But I do, though," said John, "you never will be easy till you get another set, and I mean they shall find 'em."