Chapter Six.
The Surgery Imp.
Dr Chartley sat in his consulting-room, with a glass jar, retort, receiver, and spirit-lamp before him. The lamp was on the table, and made with its shaded light and that of the fire a pleasant glow, which took off some of the desolation of the bare consulting-room on that bitter night.
He had been busy over his discovery, and confessed that it was not so far advanced as he could wish.
“There is a something wanting,” he had muttered more than once; and, wearied at last, he was thinking more seriously than usual of his son, of Richmond, and of James Poynter.
“It would place her above the reach of want,” he said dreamily; “she would be happy if anything befell me. Yes, money is a power, and we are now so poor, so poor, that life seems to have become one bitter struggle, in which I am too weak to engage.”
He sighed, and rose, walked into the miserably cold surgery, where Bob was diligently polishing the front out of the nest of drawers containing drugs, and having threads of cotton from the ragged duster hanging upon the broken knobs.
“Good boy—good industrious boy,” said the doctor, patting his head gently, before taking up a little graduated glass, pouring in a small quantity from a bottle at the top of the shelves, and after turning it into a medicine glass, he filled up with water and drank it.