"Eh, is he?" exclaimed Mrs. Wainwright, with such visible satisfaction that the Doctor smiled now as he recalled it; she had barely patience to escort him to the door, and before he mounted his horse, he heard her joyfully informing her Gaffer that owd Martin Tyrer had getten th' 'titus, and she hoped that now he'd be satisfied and give ower frettin' hissel'.
"I shall have an equally warm reception here, I suppose," said the Doctor to himself, as he dismounted before Tyrer's door, "but, whatever happens, the old man must not think of going out to-morrow. It would be serious if he caught fresh cold."
Martin Tyrer was sitting, almost upright, in his bed, supported by many pillows, for when he lay down, as his wife explained to the Doctor, he fair choked. He was an immensely tall and stout man, with a large red face, and a stolid lack-lustre eye, which he brought solemnly to bear upon the Doctor as he entered the room.
"Well," said Craddock, "how are you to-day, Tyrer? Better, I hope."
Tyrer rolled his eyes in the direction of his wife, apparently as an intimation that she was to answer for him.
"Noan so well," said Mrs. Tyrer lugubriously, proceeding thereupon to give accurate, not to say harrowing, particulars of her master's symptoms; Tyrer, meanwhile, suffering his glance to wander from one to the other, and occasionally nodding or shaking his head. It was not until she paused from want of breath that he put in his word.
"I mun get up to-morrow," he remarked, apparently addressing no one in particular.
"I mun get up to-morrow," he remarked
"If you do you'll make an end of yourself, my friend," returned the Doctor decidedly. "You stay where you are, and go on with your gruel and poultices—by-the-bye you needn't make those poultices quite so thick, Mrs. Tyrer—and I'll come and see you on Wednesday. You mustn't think of getting up. If you go out in this east wind, it will be the death of you. Really you people are mad about your Club Day—you should have seen old Robert Wainwright, when I told him just now that it would be quite impossible for him to go out."