“I wish you well out of it,” replied I, with some bitterness. “And pray with whom may you be so dreadfully in love—Anny Whistle?”
“Anny Whistle!—to the winds have I whistled her long ago. No, that was a juvenile fancy. Hear me. I am in love with the charming widow.”
“What, Mrs St. Felix?”
“Yes. Felix means happy in Latin, and my happiness depends upon her. I must either succeed, or—Tom, do you see that bottle?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s laudanum; that’s all.”
“But, Tom, you forget; you certainly would not supplant your patron, your master, I may say your benefactor—the doctor?”
“Why not? he has tried, and failed. He has been trying to make an impression upon her these ten years, but it’s no go. Ain’t I a doctor, as good as he? Ay, better, for I’m a young doctor, and he is an old one! All the ladies are for me now. I’m a very rising young man.”
“Well, don’t rise much higher, or your head will reach up to the shop ceiling. Have you anything more to say to me?”
“Why, I have hardly begun. You see, Tom, the widow looks upon me with a favourable eye, and more than once I have thought of popping the question over the counter; but I never could muster up courage, my love is so intense. As the poet says—