“Let’s talk!” he said, affably, as he assisted in pushing Dr. Maynard’s chair nearer the window from which could be seen a charming peep of the garden. “We’ve done enough hard work for to-day. You’re tired.”
“I’m always tired,” replied the old gentleman, querulously. “This infernal gout is killing me!”
“No doubt!” agreed the Philosopher, suavely. “But it’s doing it quite gently! Twinges of the toe—yes!—of course. Still things might be worse. You might have had cancer!”
“That’s no consolation!” growled old Maynard. “What I might have had doesn’t matter. It’s what I’ve got!”
The distinguished Walter Craig, LL.D., F.S.A., nodded his head blandly.
“My dear fellow, I know that! It’s what you’ve got! True! But we all ‘get’ something, sooner or later, otherwise we should never grow old and never die. The latest science tells us there’s no such thing as ‘natural’ death. We ‘get’ something that is unnatural which forces our exit when we would rather stay where we find ourselves.”
“What do you expect to ‘get’?” Maynard demanded.
“Much the same as yourself,” the Philosopher replied, with smiling equanimity. “Gout. It is an aristocratic illness,—it comes down to one like one’s coat-of-arms. It’s a case of the sins of the fathers. What the fathers did for me I don’t quite know—but they left me their disease in the most generous way. It has not affected me much yet—but it will.”
“It will—you may depend on that!” and Dr. Maynard’s voice had quite a ring of cheerfulness as he spoke. “It never lets go its prey! I fought it off for years—but I’ve had to give in.” Here he peered anxiously through the window across the garden. “I wonder where Sylvia is? She’s always out of the way when I want her!”
The Philosopher glanced at the clock.