“Bother the pig.”
“Is that the way you study your patients?”
“I’ve got better things to study.” He could only say it to her back, but he threw enough intensity into it to come out on the other side of her.
“Indeed!” The back seemed impenetrable. “You going into another business?”
“Why ever should I when I’m getting on so famously—ten pound a week, if a penny.” It was an opportunity made to his hand. “I know,” he went on, as the back remained rigid, “that folks pretend it’s not as high-class as real doctoring, but believe me it needs more brains.”
“Does it?”
“Stands to reason. A human being can tell you what he feels and where the pain lays, but with a dumb beast you’ve got only your own sense and skill to go on: it’s us vets that should really be at the top of the profession.”
“But sick babies are dumb too,” Jinny reminded him.
“Sick babies have talking mammas,” he replied genteelly.
Jinny did not imitate them, and silence fell again, tempered by Methusalem’s snappings. Really, it was very awkward, Elijah felt, thus proposing to a girl behind her back. But he struggled gallantly. “Take stomach staggers now—if those horses you saw waiting to be killed this evening had been treated in time——!”