"You've been making a hog of yourself again, popper!" she said severely.
"Oser!" Sam protested. "Crackers and milk I am eating for my lunch. The doctor could tell you the same."
Ten minutes afterward Sam was tucked up in his bed, while in an adjoining room the young physician communicated his diagnosis to Doctor Eichendorfer.
"Arteriosclerosis, I should say," he murmured, and Doctor Eichendorfer sniffed audibly.
"You mean Bright's Disease—ain't it?" he said. "That feller's arteries is as sound as plumbing."
Doctor Eichendorfer had received his medical training in Vienna and he considered it to be a solemn duty never to agree with the diagnosis of a native M.D.
"I thought of Bright's Disease," the young physician replied, speaking a little less than the naked truth; for in diagnosing Sam's ailment he had thought of nearly every disease he could remember.
"Well, you could take it from me, Doctor," Eichendorfer concluded, "when one of these old-timers goes under there's a history of a rich, unbalanced diet behind it; and Bright's Disease it is. Also, you shouldn't forget to send in your bill—not a cent less than ten dollars."
He shook his confrère warmly by the hand; and three hours later the melancholy circumstance of Sam's Bright's Disease was known to every member of the cloak and suit trade, with one exception—to wit, as the lawyers say, Sam himself. He knew that he had had gefüllte Rinderbrust, but by seven o'clock this knowledge became only a torment as the savoury odour of the family dinner ascended to his bedroom.
"Babette," he called faintly, as becomes a convalescent, "ain't I going to have no dinner at all to-night?"