"Well, haven't you got any water?"
"Divil a bit. I have to take my pail and go to Bread Strate for it."
"And the water doesn't come into your cellar?"
"Sure it comes into me cellar sometimes—but it's as salt as brine; it's the say water. I've tried to drink it, but it made me sick. O, I'm bad, dochthor, dear; if you think the water'll cure me, tell me where I can get it."
"You've got the pipes down your way?"
"I've got the pipes, dochthor, dear—but sorrow a bit of tibaccy. Do you think smoking is good for the rheumatiz?"
"There's some mistake here," said the clerk; "what's that you've got in your hand?"
"They tould me to bring this bit ov pasteboord here, sure."
The clerk took it. It was a dispensary ticket. He explained the mistake, and told the applicant where she should go to obtain medicine and advice.
"No, dochthor, dear—it's no mistake—it's the water cure I'm after. Sure it's the blissid wather that saves us. There was Pat Murphy that brak his leg when he fell with a hod of bricks aff the ladder in Say Strate, and they put a bit of wet rag round it, and the next wake he was dancing a jig to the chune of Paddy Rafferty, at the ball given by the Social Burial Society. And there was my sister Molly's old man, Phelim, that was took bad wid the fever—and he drank walth of whiskey, but it never did him a bit of good—but when he lift off the whiskey, and drank nothin' but wather, he came round in a wake. O, dochthor, let me have the blissid water."