“Well, if he didn’t stand there sawing one of his hands about and talking there, shouting at the poor lad as if he was in the next street, or he was a hout-door preacher, till I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I made him go.”
“Ah, I suppose the professor is accustomed to lecture.”
“Then he had better go and lecture, sir. He sha’n’t talk my poor boy to death.”
“Well, quiet is best for him, Mrs Dunn,” said the doctor smiling at the rosy-faced old lady, who had turned quite fierce; “but still, change and something to interest him will do good.”
“More good than physic, sir?”
“Well, yes, Mrs Dunn, I will be frank with you—more good than physic. What did Mr Burne say about the poor fellow going to Madeira or the south of France?”
“Said, sir, that he’d better take his Madeira out of a wine-glass and his south of France out of a book. I don’t know what he meant, and when I asked him he only blew his nose till I felt as if I could have boxed his ears. But now, doctor, what do you really think about the poor dear? You see he’s like my own boy. Didn’t I nurse him when he was a baby, and didn’t his poor mother beg of me to always look after him? And I have. Nobody can’t say he ever had a shirt with a button off, or a hole in his clean stockings, or put on anything before it was aired till it was dry as a bone. But now tell me what you really think of him.”
“That I can do nothing whatever, Mrs Dunn,” said the doctor kindly. “Our London winters are killing him, and I have no faith in the south of England doing any good. The only hope is a complete change to a warmer land.”
“But I couldn’t let him go to a horrible barbarous foreign country, sir.”
“Not to save his life, Mrs Dunn?”