“Ain’t she got it!” he muttered, and he stood listening still, for he heard voices at the end of the passage.
“’Lisbeth,” he said, and there was a knock.
The boy opened the passage door softly, and a voice said.
“I’ve cut you some bread and cheese; it’s on the kitchen table.”
“Goin’ to bed, ’Lisbeth?”
There was a grunt, and the sound of departing steps, while the boy stood gazing along the passage.
“So are you?” he exclaimed, closing the door, “Ain’t she got a temper! I can’t help my old woman coming. ’Tain’t my fault. I shouldn’t turn sulky if it was hern.”
Bob did not go down for a moment, but stood thinking. Then he ran out softly, and down-stairs into the dark kitchen to fetch his supper, which he preferred to eat with the fragrant odours of drugs about him, and seated upon the chest which contained the grisly relics of mortality, and against whose receptacle the boy’s heels softly drummed.
The stale bread and hard Dutch cheese rapidly disappeared, the boy looking very stolid during the process of deglutition. Then his face lit up, and for a space he went through his pantomime again, seeing patients, pocketing their fees, dressing wounds, setting limbs, and, above all, prescribing a medicine which he compounded carefully, and, to give realism to the proceedings, himself took.
It was not an objectionable medicine, being composed of small portions of tartaric acid and soda, dropped into a wineglass which contained so much water, into which had been dropped a little syrup of ginger, afterwards flavoured with orange or lemon.