“Yes, I am, sir—in my self-respect. Here, help me up. Oh, dear! Oh, lor’! Gently! Oh, my back! Oh, dear! No; I can’t sit down. That’s better. Ah!”
“Would you like a doctor fetched?”
“Doctor? Hang your doctor, sir. Do you think I’ve came out here to be poisoned by a foreign doctor. Oh, bless my soul! Oh, dear me! Confound the gun! It’s a miserable cheap piece of rubbish. Went off in my hands. Anyone shot?”
“No, sir,” said the dealer quietly; “fortunately you held the muzzle well up, and the charges went out of the upper part of the door.”
“Oh! you’re there, are you?” cried Mr Burne furiously, as he lay back in a cane chair, whose cushion seemed to be comfortable. “How dared you put such a miserable wretched piece of rubbish as that in my hands!”
The dealer made a deprecatory gesture.
“Here, clear away all these people. Be off with you. What are you staring at? Did you never see an English gentleman meet with an accident before? Oh, dear me! Oh, my conscience! Bless my heart, I shall never get over this.”
The dealer went about from one to the other of the passers-by who had crowded in, and the grave gentlemanly Turks bowed and left in the most courteous manner, while the others, a very motley assembly, showed some disposition to stay, but were eventually persuaded to go outside, and the door was closed.
“To think of me, a grave quiet solicitor, being reduced to such a position as this. I’m crippled for life. I know I am. Serves me right for coming. Here, give me a little brandy or a glass of wine.”
The latter was brought directly, and the old lawyer drank it, with the result that it seemed to make him more angry.