Volume Two—Chapter Nineteen.
Doctor and Patient.
“Keep him off! He wants to murder me!”
“My good fellow,” said Salis sternly, “you are trying to murder yourself. Sit still, or I’ll hold you down. If you don’t know what’s good for yourself, it’s fit some one should.”
“But I tell you—”
“And I tell you,” cried Salis angrily, for Tom Candlish’s fierce obstinacy was teaching him that the clerical garb and years of mental repression will not quite crush out the natural man.
“It’s very good of you to come, North,” he said, crossing to his friend. “Getting up out of a sick bed, too, for the cause of this brute. I wish sometimes that education did not force us to be so extremely benevolent and philanthropic over mauvais sujets; but it does. Are you better?”
“Yes,” said North hastily; and his face being free from marks, he was able to confront his friend boldly. “I knew there was no doctor within reach, and I was afraid the case might be turning serious. Let’s see.”