“But do you think you could cure me?”
“Course I could, my lad; but I mustn’t. You’ve get the doctor to see you. Don’t he do you no good?”
“No, Barney; he only laughed at me—like you did.”
“’Nough to make him, lad. You’re not bad.”
“I tell you I am,” cried Syd, angrily. “What did you give Pan?”
“I didn’t give him nothin’, sir. I only showed him a rope’s-end, and I says to him, ‘Now look ye here, Pan-y-mar,’ I says, ‘if you aren’t dressed and up and doing in quarter hour, here’s your dose.’”
“Oh!” moaned Syd.
“And he never wanted to take it, Master Syd, for he was up on deck ’fore I said, and he haven’t been bad since.”
“How could you be such a brute, Barney?”
“Brute, lad? Why, it was a kindness. If I might serve you the same—”