I assure him that I have, and the poor fellow is so taken aback by this simple little act of kindness that all he can say is, “I’m blessed!” and that he keeps on repeating.
By degrees, though, we are in full conversation, and I have told him about seeing his wife and given her message of love, and then he has told me with the greatest exactness all about the way in which that nearside horse let out at him with his off hoof, and caught him in the leg. There are no bones broken, but it has been very painful, and how that he should have been at Saint George’s or Charing Cross Hospital only a doctor who lived at Richmond and often rode up and down on his omnibus wanted him to come into his hospital, University College.
“And precious kind he’s been to me, that he has. Why, if I’d been his own brother he couldn’t have done for me better.”
And so he chatted on about himself, his wife and children, and lastly, as he found a willing listener, about horses, the one that kicked him, and horses in general.
“I don’t think as the poor creetur did it out of spite again me ma’am,” he said, “for I’m always pretty gentle with horses, for I likes ’em. He let out at me because, perhaps, a fly touched him or out of fidgetiness or something; but anyhow I got it.
“You’d hardly think it, lying wrapped up warm here, but being weak I s’pose has brought out my rheumatics horrid.
“Wonderful trying thing to a man’s constitution is ’bus driving; particular when them cold winds and biting rains are on. Then’s the time one suffers from the rheumatics. Don’t know what they are, I s’pose? Good job for you, ma’am. Take my advice, and keep them at a distance, for they’re a sort of poor relation as will stick to you; and so sure as you fancy you’ve got rid of them, back they comes first rainy day as there is. Rainy day, you knows, just the time as poor relations comes down on you; though, p’raps, you ain’t got any poor relations. Some people ain’t—leastwise, none as they knows. Well, first rainy day you’re a bit out o’ sorts they comes back again, the rheumatics does, and you know it, and no mistake.
“I got ’em through getting wet, and being obliged to sit on the box all day. A raw nip of brandy would have kept ’em off p’raps, but raw nips of brandy tell upon a man, and I promised Sairey I wouldn’t have so many, for she’s werry particular about my personal appearance, and she said as the brandy got in the end of my nose and stopped there; so I sat it out that day without a raw nip, though I was having nips enough anyhow.
“That night I could hardly get off my box; next day I was a bit better, but next night I had to be helped down; and though I fought it out, day after day, knowing as giving up meant stopping the bread and cheese, it got to be so that there was no bearing it, and I couldn’t sit, nor stand, nor sleep without having some drops out of a bottle of stuff as the old woman bought at the chemist’s. Why, it was like toothache beginning in your hip and running right down in your boot, only twice as bad.
“‘Have the doctor,’ says the missus, after I’d been at home two days.