‘All right, Heckett, you’re going on well. You’ll be able to get out in a week. By Jove! I thought it was all up with you that night you sent for me in a hurry. I didn’t expect you’d live till the morning.’
‘But I did, ye see; and I mean to live a good bit longer yet. Josh Heckett isn’t going to snuff: it just for a crack on the head.’
‘No, you weren’t born to die that way, Josh.’
The invalid glanced up at the doctor’s face with a look of such intense rage that it convulsed his swollen features, and made him cry out with pain.
‘Mind what you say, governor,’ he hissed, clinching his fist under the counterpane. ‘If I come to a bad end there’s others as ‘ll have to be in the same boat with me.’
The doctor laughed, and turned the conversation.
‘How does Gertie manage?’
‘Oh, all right. She’s a kind wench; I don’t know what I should do without her. She’s a fust-class nuss, and she attends the animiles, and she can talk to the customers better nor I can.’
‘Well, then, why do you swear at her?’
The man looked at him a moment as if he had not heard aright.