This being the language applied to stock, confirmed me in the notion that he was a veterinary. I had once before heard it applied to a human being in a far bush place, where a man who lived unhappily with his wife one morning remarked to a neighbour that "The missus nearly pegged out last night," and it was considered a fitting remark for such a monster as this man was supposed to have been, but this doctor said it quite naturally.
I found him a friendly and communicative fellow, and as he gave in an hour's gossip with grandma and me for one fee, I was willing to take it to pass away a dull morning.
"What on earth did you go rowing for?" he asked me.
"The roads are too bad to go walking."
"That's only within range of the municipality. The council wants bursting up. They can't do anything with everything mortgaged to old Dr Tinker. He holds the whole thing. It's a pity he wouldn't peg out one of these nights, and we might get something done. But it's not him who has the money—it's the old woman."
"That's her Mrs Bray was tellin' us walloped the girl for bein' admired by the old doctor," explained grandma.
"Money, that's what he married her for," continued the doctor. "I don't know where he could have picked her up. Some say she is a publican's widow, but Jackson, the solicitor here, has a different hypothesis. He says he's seen her running along carrying five cups and saucers of tea at once, and no one but a ship's waitress could do that. At any rate she's a great man of a woman; can swear like a trooper if things don't go right. She's got the old man completely cowed."
"Am I to infer that cowing her spouse and swearing outrageously makes her man-like?" I laconically inquired. But the doctor's understanding didn't seem to go in for small satirical detail, he conversed on a more wholesale fashion, rattling on for a good half-hour to a patient for whom quietude was necessary, lest she should "peg out."
"Ain't he a bosker?" enthusiastically commented Andrew, coming in to see what I had thought of this doctor, who was the idol of Noonoon.
"Has he a large practice?" I cautiously inquired, seeking to discover was he really a doctor.