David sat down on the bed again. His movements had a surprising gentleness for so large a man. His odd, humorous face was quite serious.
“Really, sir, I don’t know,” he said, “I really don’t. There’s no more to be done if you won’t let me operate. No, we won’t go over all that again. I know you’ve made up your mind. And no one can possibly say how long it may be. You might have died this week, or you may die in a month, or it may go on for a year—or two—or three. You’ve the sort of constitution they don’t make nowadays.”
“Three years,” said old Mr. Edward Mottisfont—“three years, David—and this damn pain all along—all the time—gettin’ worse——”
“Oh, I think we can relieve the pain, sir,” said David cheerfully.
“Much obliged, David. Some beastly drug that’ll turn me into an idiot. No, thank ye, I’ll keep my wits if it’s all the same to you. Well, well, it’s all in the day’s work, and I’m not complaining, but Edward’ll get mortal tired of waiting for my shoes if I last three years. I doubt his patience holding out. He’ll be bound to hasten matters on. Think of the bad example I shall be for the baby—when it comes. Lord, David, what d’ ye want to look like that for? I suppose they’ll have babies like other folk, and I’ll be a bad example for ’em. Edward’ll think of that. When he’s thought of it enough, and I’ve got on his nerves a bit more than usual, he’ll put strychnine or arsenic into my soup. Oh, Edward’ll poison me yet. You’ll see.”
“Poor old Edward, it’s not much in his line,” said David with half a laugh.
“Eh? What about Pellico’s dog then?”
“Pellico’s dog, sir?”
“What an innocent young man you are, David—never heard of Pellico’s dog before, did you? Pellico’s dog that got on Edward’s nerves same as I get on his nerves, and you never knew that Edward dosed the poor brute with some of his bug-curing stuff, eh? To be sure you didn’t think I knew, nor did Edward. I don’t tell everything I know, and how I know it is my affair and none of yours, Master David Blake, but you see Edward’s not so unhandy with a little job in the poisoning line.”
David’s face darkened. The incident of Pellico’s dog had occurred when he and Edward were schoolboys of fifteen. He remembered it very well, but he did not very much care being reminded of it. Every day of his life he passed the narrow turning, down which, in defiance of parental prohibitions, he and Edward used to race each other to school. Old Pellico’s dirty, evil-smelling shop still jutted out of the farther end, and the grimy door-step upon which his dog used to lie in wait for their ankles was still as grimy as ever. Sometimes it was a trouser-leg that suffered. Sometimes an ankle was nipped, and if Pellico’s dog occasionally got a kick in return, it was not more than his due. David remembered his own surprise when it first dawned upon him that Edward minded—yes, actually minded these encounters. He recalled the occasion when Edward, his face of a suspicious pallor, had denied angrily that he was afraid of any beastly dog, and then his sudden wincing confession that he did mind—that he minded horribly—not because he was afraid of being bitten—Edward explained this point very carefully—but because the dog made such a beastly row, and because Edward dreamed of him at night, only in his dreams, Pellico’s dog was rather larger than Pellico himself, and the lane was a cul-de-sac with a wall at the end of it, against which he crouched in his dream whilst the dog came nearer and nearer.