“The liver,” said he; “why, I’ve known men to go on forty years who had no livers at all. Because yours has refused to secrete and has painted you up with jaundice, you put it in front, and belittle more important things. With good blood, sir, a man need have no liver.”
“Without a liver,” maintained the saffron-hued man, “he could not have good blood.”
Mr. Scanlon nodded to the landlord.
“It’s a fine, uplifting conversation,” said he, in a low tone. “Do you have to listen to them often?”
The innkeeper smiled.
“About two-thirds of the talk here is of symptoms,” answered he.
“I once stopped at a hotel in Colorado,” said Bat, “where they were loaded up with a gang something like this one of yours. They’d sit around and draw diagrams of each other, and stick pins in the places where their ailments were located. And I never saw one of them back out when it came to the possession of the most deadly complaint. They were as keen for the championship as a crowd of golfers round a green.”
“These are about like that,” said the landlord.
“It’s funny the way the thing works,” commented Bat. “A man can go along all his life with no one paying the slightest attention to him; then he accumulates a rare disease, and at once becomes an object of interest. Can you blame him if he cherishes his aches and makes much of his pains? They’ve lifted him out of the rut for the first time in his life, and given him something to brag about.”
The wheels of the rolling chair sounded upon the porch floor, and the squat servant pushed it out into the hotel. Scanlon glanced about.