“No—no one—I don’t mind,” said the doctor, smiling with half-closed eyes into his tumbler. “Or, yes, we’ll have your man up when you go to bed; that will do.”
“I missed Dr. Wagget to-day; he called here,” said William.
“Not after nightfall, though,” said the physician, with a screw of his lips and eyebrows. “I saw him early to-day; he’s awfully frightened, and spoke like a sermon about it.”
William looked sorely disquieted at this confirmation of his estimate of Dr. Wagget’s opinion of the case. He and Drake exchanged a solemn glance, and the doctor lowering his eyes sipped some grog, and bursting into a mysterious fit of laughter which rather frightened William, who helplessly stood at the tea-table, and gazed on the spectacle. Everything began to puzzle him now; the doctor was like an awful grotesque in a dream. How could a good-natured and shrewd man laugh thus, amid suffering and horrors such as he had witnessed?
“I beg your pardon, but I could not help laughing when I thought of the rector’s long face to-day, and his long words, by Jove,” and in a minute or two more, the doctor exploded suddenly again, with the old apology on recovering his gravity, and William’s bewilderment increased.
The doctor insisted on William’s adhering strictly to his tea and his hours, precisely as if he were alone.
And Tom came in, and the doctor, who was in nowise ceremonious, made him sit down by the fire, and furnished him with a glass of the grog he so recommended.
He then delivered to Tom a brief popular lecture on the subject he desired him to comprehend, and, having thus charged him, silence reigned; and then the doctor, after an interval, smoked half a dozen pipes, and by the time the last was out it was past three o’clock.
The doctor had left the study door open. The moon was shining through the great hall window.
“Put off your shoes, make no noise, and follow me close, with the candle, wherever I go. Don’t stir till I do,” whispered the doctor, repeating the directions he had already given—“Hish!”