“Then you have pain in talking?”
“Yes; that above all.”
“Your digestion is not good?”
“No; it never has been.”
The man seemed quite reassured. He replied with a kind of enthusiasm—like some one who is at last understood. But, all at once, the old doctor shrugs his shoulders and reveals the trap:
“You’ve got everything wrong with you—that’s quite clear. Well, you are classed A1—the fighting line.”
“But surely you are aware——”
“You have too many illnesses; there’s nothing wrong with you. Get out! The fighting line for you!”
Sometimes somebody coughs, and at once a storm of coughing breaks out among the men gathered there.
A big grey-haired fellow comes out of a dark corner. Everybody shrinks away from him, with a kind of disgust. Then he remonstrates with his neighbours: