"I tell you I won't, I won't," roared the impatient patient. "I never could taste a dhrop of physic in my life."
"Oh, my! what a fib," said his consoler, the sweet-voiced Mrs. Bulworthy. "Why, you've swallowed enough to kill a regiment of decent people. Indeed, I don't know what's come over you to day, at all; you're not a bit like yourself."
"The devil I'm not," said the other, somewhat alarmed; but a glance at his swathed extremities, accompanied by a spasm of pain, gave him uncomfortable assurance that he was still in the Squire's skin. "Bedad, ma'm," he went on, "if you and the gout ain't enough to drive a man out of himself, I don't know what would; get out, I tell you, and leave me alone; one at a time's enough."
"Will you promise to read this tract, then?"
"It's a mighty fine time to talk about readin'. How much money am I worth?"
"You surely don't forget that, Pether?"
"Well, indeed, what with the pain and other little matters, it has slipped my memory."
"Just eight thousand six hundred pounds."
"As much as that? murdher alive! you don't say so; then let us pack up and be off," cried he, with an injudicious bound of pleasure that brought the corkscrew into his joints with redoubled acuteness.
"Go, where?" inquired Mrs. Bulworthy, as coolly as though she were enjoying the agony which revelled through his racked frame.