The idea of the doctor taking such a person out of his turn!
It was strange, certainly, but Dr. Birnie had done it, and when the rough-looking fellow was shown into his consulting-room, he held out his hand, and exclaimed, quite familiarly, ‘Well, Josh, wherever have you turned up from?’
Then Mr. Josh Heckett told Dr. Birnie a long story, beginning in England, then going to Australia, and coming back to England again, and the said story ended on the banks of the Serpentine.
‘Good gracious me!’ said the doctor. ‘And you mean to say that Marston deliberately tried to murder you?’
‘I do by———!’ exclaimed Heckett, bringing his fist down on the table till the surgical instruments danced again; ‘and he’s done it, except as it’s a slow death ‘stid of a quick un. I ain’t been the same man, guv’nor, since that there night. It’s the wettin’ and the cold as done it. This ‘ere corf don’t give me no rest night nor day.’
Dr. Birnie put something to the old man’s chest and listened, then he put his ear to his back and made him draw his breath, and then the doctor’s face assumed a grave, profound look.
‘Hem!’ he said; ‘that’s bad. You ought to have come to me before. How long have you had this cough?’
‘Soon arter the duckin’ it come on, and it’s got wus and wus. I bought no end o’ lozengers and things off the barrers, as they sez cures a corf in no time; but they didn’t do me a bit o’ good. So I thought as I’d find you out and see if you could set me right. I ain’t bothered you for a good many years now.’
‘Well, Josh, I’ll see what I can do for you, but you must be careful. You’d better keep indoors as much as you can, and I’ll give you a prescription.’
The doctor wrote something on a piece of paper, and handed it to Josh.