“I was going to say, uncle, that I know how it can all be managed.”
“Yes, sir, of course! Like all stupid people you want to put your spoke in the wheel and stir everything up and make the mess worse than it was before.—I say, doctor,”—and there was a peculiar twinkle in Sir James’s eye—“that’s what you would call a mixed metaphor, isn’t it?”
“Well, Sir James,” said the doctor, smiling, “it does sound something like it.”
“Sound!” said Sir James, who was cooling fast. “It would look very much like it in print. Now, Dean, fire away. How were you going to put it right?”
“You come too, uncle.”
“Come too!” cried the boy’s uncle, growing fierce again. “How can I come too, sir? Why, sir, I should want a Sam Weller, like poor old Pickwick at Dingley Dell, when he could not go to the partridge shooting. Do you think I want to go in a wheelbarrow with someone to push me, in a country where there are no roads? Bah! Pish! Tush! Rrrrr–r–r–rubbish! Here, doctor, did you ever hear such a piece of lunacy in your life?”
“Well, I don’t know, Sir James. Lunacy?”
“Yes, sir; lunacy. Now, look here, doctor, don’t you begin apologising for these boys and taking their part, because if you do, sir, we are no longer friends.”
“Well, Sir James, it has always been an understood thing between us that I was to be quite independent and have liberty to express my opinion in matters connected with you and your boys.”
“There, I knew it! You are going over to their side!” raged out Sir James. “And I know how it will be: I shall be so upset that I shall have a fearful fit of the gout after this, and be obliged to have in that doctor with his wretched mixtures for the next fortnight. Well, sir, I must listen to you, I suppose.”