Before my father and he had been talking many minutes, the doctor turned sharply round in his saddle, with one hand resting on the pony’s back. He was going to speak, but his hand tickled the pony, which began to kick, whereupon Doctor Chowne, who looked rather red-faced and excited, stuck his spurs into the pony’s ribs, and this made him rear and back towards the cliff edge, till the doctor dragged his head round so that he could see the sea, when he directly ran backwards and stood with his tail in the bank.
“Quiet, will you?” cried the doctor, and, as the pony was not being tickled, he consented to stand still. “Here, Bob!” said the doctor then.
“Yes, father.”
“Go home.”
“Go home, father! Mayn’t I go along with Sep Duncan?”
“I said go home, sir,” said the doctor sternly; and Bob turned short upon his heel, and I saw him go along the road cutting viciously at the ferns and knapweeds at every step.
“Come along, Sep,” said my father, and I followed them as they walked slowly back towards our cottage, my father holding on by the pony’s mane as he talked quickly to the doctor.
For my father and Doctor Chowne were great friends, having once served for a long time in the same ship together; and so it was that, when my father left the service and settled down to his quiet life at the little bay, Doctor Chowne bought the practice off the last doctor’s widow, and settled himself, with his boy, at Ripplemouth.
As I say, the doctor and my father were very great friends, such great friends that when one day my father felt himself to be dangerously ill, and sent over in great haste for Doctor Chowne, that gentleman galloped over and examined him carefully, and then began to bully him and call him names. He told him there was nothing the matter with him but fancy, and made him get up and go out for a walk, and told him afterwards that if they had not been such great friends he—the doctor—would have run him up a twenty-pound bill for attendance instead of nothing at all.
And there before me were those two, one walking and the other riding, with their heads close together, talking in a low eager tone, while I was thinking about how hard it was for Bob Chowne that he should be sent away, and began to wish that I had not found that piece of stone.