“Die? No: nonsense, boy. I was only speaking metaphorically. Don’t you see?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“No, you don’t, you young humbug,” he retorted sharply. “You don’t know what a metaphor is.”
“Yes, sir, it’s a figure of speech in which one idea is used instead of another.”
“Hallo!” he said; “why, how do you get your living?”
“I’m a reading-boy at a printer’s, sir.”
“Oh! Are you? I should have thought you were reading-boy to a professor of language. Well, we mustn’t forget our patient. Give me a glass, boy.”
“Will a teacup do, sir?”
“Oh yes, and a teaspoon. That’s right,” he said; and, emptying a little phial into the cup, he proceeded to give poor Revitts some of the stimulus it contained.
“There,” he said, “he’s coming round, poor fellow; but I daresay he’ll be a bit shaky in the head. He mustn’t get up; and you must give notice at his station as soon as it’s light, or to the first policeman you see.”