“Don’t I wish such a chance were offered to me!”
Featherston sat down on a high stool, which stood before the physic shelves, to revolve the momentous question. And by the time he took over it, he seemed to find it a difficult task.
“One hardly likes to refuse the request, put as Mary writes it,” remarked he presently. “Yet I don’t see how I can go all the way over there; or how I could leave my patients here. What a temper some of them would be in!”
“They wouldn’t die of it. It would be a rare holiday for you. Set you up in health for a year to come.”
“I’ve not had a holiday since that time at Pumpwater,” he rejoined dreamily; “when I went over for a day or two to see poor John Whitney. You remember it, Johnny; you were there.”
“Ay, I remember it.”
“Not that this is a question of a holiday for me or no holiday, and I wonder you should put it so, Johnny Ludlow; it turns upon Ann Preen. Ann Fennel, that’s to say. If I thought I could do her any good, and those French doctors can’t, why, I suppose I ought to make an effort to go.”
“To be sure. Make one also to take me with you!”
“I dare say!” laughed Featherston. “What would the Squire say to that?”
“Bluster a bit, and then see it was the very thing for me, and ask what the cost would be. Mr. Featherston, I shall be ready to start when you are. Please let me go!”