“How dare I, sir?” cried the Doctor, who was quite as angry. “How dare you come here, disturbing my patients, and turning the place into a bear-garden just because you have dropped your idiotic eyeglass and broken it? Do you know I have poor fellows in the next room in a precarious state?”
“What! Dropped my eyeglass, sir? I tell you, this lunatic here struck at me, sir, and knocked the glass flying.”
“What!” cried the Doctor. “Did you do that, Bracy?”
“No, no, Doctor,” stammered the young man; “I assure you I—I—”
“I—I—I!” roared the Major. “How dare you deny it, sir! He did, Doctor. The fellow’s stark staring mad, and ought to be in a strait-waistcoat. He isn’t safe. He might have blinded me. I came in here quite out of sympathy, to sit with him a little while, and this is the treatment I received. Suppose I had lost my sight.”
“Look here, Major,” said the Doctor, turning to him, after stepping to the bed and laying his hand upon Bracy’s forehead; “the poor fellow is as weak as a babe, and could no more have done what you say than flown out of the window and across the valley. You are exaggerating, and—Oh, my gracious!”
The Major had just time to hop aside and avoid the Doctor’s head, for all at once a tremendous kick was delivered from the bed, and the receiver was propelled as if from a catapult across the room, to bring himself up against the wall. Here he turned sharply, to see Bracy lying perfectly still upon the bed, staring at him wildly, and the Major holding his sides, his always prominent eyes threatening to start from his head, while his cheeks became purple as he choked with laughter and stamped about, trying hard to catch his breath.
“Ho, ho, ho! Ho, ho, ho!” he laughed hoarsely. “Oh Doctor! you’ll be the death of me. This is too rich—this is too rich—this is too rich!”
“Too rich? Be the death of you? I wish it would,” panted the Doctor, turning to the bed to shake his fist at Bracy, but keeping well out of reach of his leg, “You treacherous young scoundrel! How dare you play me such a trick as this?”
Bracy’s lips moved, but no sound was heard, and his eyes looked wildly pathetic in their expression.