“Hush! Of course I have; only one must make a bit o’ fuss over it. Sackerlidge and dessercation, you know.”
“Oh! I see.”
“I wouldn’t do such a thing for any one but a doctor, you know. Anno Domical purposes, eh?”
“You’re getting the purpose mixed up with your disease, Moredock,” said the doctor, as the old man took out a key from the pocket of his coat, and, after blowing in it and tapping it on the table, prior to drawing a pin from the edge of his waistcoat and treating the key as if it were a periwinkle, he crossed to the old oak coffer.
“Just shut that door, doctor,” he said. “That’s right. Now shove the bolt. Nobody aren’t likely to come unless Dally Watlock does, for she always runs over when she aren’t wanted, and stops away when she is. Thankye, doctor.”
He stooped down, looking like some curious old half-bald bird, to unlock the chest, and then, after raising the lid a short distance, in a cunningly secretive way, he thrust in one arm, and brought out a dark-looking human skull.
“Ha! yes,” cried the doctor, taking the grisly relic of mortality in his hands. “Yes, that’s a very perfect specimen; but it’s a woman’s, evidently. I wanted a man’s.”
“You said sell you a skull,” said the old man angrily. “You never said nowt about man or woman.”
“No. It was an oversight. There, never mind.”
“Ay, but I do mind,” grumbled the old man. “I like to sadersfy my customers. Give it me back.”