“I’m not going to take any more,” he said. “Why, this last year I’ve tried the hot-water cure, the lemon cure, and the cold-water cure. I’ve worn four different sorts of pads and belts, I’ve been medically rubbed, and I’ve put myself on milk diet. I buy everything that’s advertised in the newspapers and on the hoardings, and I take everything everybody sends me, and the only time I was really well for a week was when I sent my little dog, who had a bad liver, to the veterinary surgeon, and he sent her some powders, and I took them by mistake for my own. When I went to get some more, the vet. had gone for his holiday and left an assistant. The assistant looked over the books and sent me some more powders. I thought they tasted different; but I took them, and ever since that I have never been able to pass a cat’s-meat barrow without wanting to stand on my hind legs and beg. The stupid assistant had made up some powders to give a dainty pet dog an appetite instead of my little dog’s liver powders.”
“Oh, Mr. Saxon,” I said, laughing; “you don’t expect me to believe that!”
“I can’t help whether you believe it or not, Mrs. Beckett,” he said; “I’m only telling you what actually happened.”
I stopped with him a little and tried to persuade him to give us a little longer trial. He couldn’t expect changes of air to do him good in a day. He said there was something in that, and he’d try another day or two.
I got Harry to offer to go for a long walk with him; and when Harry came back, he said, “My dear, I really think this time Mr. Saxon is a bit dotty.”
“Whatever do you mean, Harry,” I said.
“Well, he’s been asking me if I could get him a nice jolly crew of sailors to man a pirate ship for him, as he thinks of turning pirate. He says he’s been ordered a sea voyage, and that’s the only way he could take it without feeling the monotony of it.”
“Oh,” I said, “you mustn’t take any notice of his talking like that. Once, when he was ordered horse exercise, I remember him saying that he’d turn highwayman, and wear a mask, and have pistols in his belt, as he must have something to occupy his mind while he was riding, or he should go to sleep and tumble off.”
Poor Mr. Saxon! I often wonder whether people, who don’t know him well, believe that he really means the idiotic things he says. He says them so seriously that you can’t help being taken in by them sometimes.
After he had been with us a couple of days he sent a telegram to London and had a telegram back, and then he called me up, and he said, “Mrs. Beckett, I’m going to ask you a very great favour.”