“Do you want me to be perfectly plain with you, sir, once more?”
“Of course. Do I look the sort of man to be humbugged?”
“Then I must tell you, sir, the simple truth. You may go on for months, perhaps a year, as you are. That is the outside.”
“I wouldn’t go on for a week as I have been, my lad.—But if I have it done?”
“There is no reason why you should not live to be eighty, or a hundred, if you can.”
“Right; I’ll go in for the hundred, Thorpe. I’m tough enough. There, get it over.”
“You will have it done?”
“Of course I will. Don’t kill me, or I’ll come back and haunt you.”
“I should be too glad to see a dear old friend again, so that wouldn’t alarm me,” said Thorpe, examining his patient, who smiled grimly. “I shall not kill you. All I’m afraid of is that I may perform the operation so unskilfully that my labour and your suffering will have been in vain.”
“And then I’ll call you a miserable pretender, and shan’t pay you a cent. Bah! You can do it. I know you, Michael Thorpe, and haven’t watched you for nothing.”