"No capping to me, my frents!" exclaimed the Doctor, with a bow, greatly pleased at these tokens of respect; "no capping to me! Pusiness is pusiness, and ven I come to sell you tings dat shall do you goot, I tank you for your custom and your money, widout asking you to touch your cap."
"There is sense in that," said John Alward; "and since you come to trade in the yard, Doctor, you can show us your wares. There is a penny to be picked up here."
"Open your box, Doctor; bring out your pennyworths; show us the inside!" demanded several voices at once.
"Ha, ha!" exclaimed the vender of drugs, "you are wise, goot frents; you know somewhat! You would have a peep at my aurum potabiles in dat little casket—my multum in parvo? Yes, you shall see, and you shall hear what you have never seen pefore, and shall not in your long lives again."
"Have you e'er a good cleansing purge for a moulting hawk?" inquired Derrick Brown, whilst the doctor was unlocking the box.
"Or a nostrum that shall be sure work on a horse with a farcy?" asked one of the grooms.
"Hast thou an elixir that shall expel a lumbago?" demanded John Alward: all three speaking at the same instant.
"Tib, the cook," said a fourth, "has been so sore beset with cramps, that only this morning she was saying, in her heart she believed she would not stop to give the paste buckle that Tom Oxcart gave her for a token at Whitsuntide, for a cordial that would touch a cold stomach. I will persuade her into a trade with the Doctor."
"Oh, as for the women," replied a fifth, "there isn't a wench in my Lord's service that hasn't a bad tooth, or a cold stomach, or a tingling in the ears, or some such ailing: it is their nature—they would swallow the Doctor's pack in a week, if they had license."
The man of nostrums was too much employed in opening out his commodities to heed the volley of questions which were poured upon him all round, but having now put himself in position for action, he addressed himself to his auditors: