“Not worse,” replied the doctor, “but his case is critical. Everything will depend on his mind being kept at ease. He has taken it into his head that his business is going to wreck while he lies there unable to attend to it, and asked me earnestly if the shop had been opened. I told him I’d step down and inquire.”
“Poor Fred!” murmured his brother sadly; “he has too good reason to fancy his business is going to wreck, with or without his attendance, for I find that very little is doing, and you can see that the entire stock isn’t worth fifty pounds—if so much. The worst of it is that his boy, who used to assist him, absconded yesterday with the contents of the till, and there is no one now to look after it.”
“That’s awkward. We must open the shop how ever, for it is all-important that his mind should be kept quiet. Do you know how to open it, Mr Blurt?”
Poor Mr Blurt looked helplessly at the closed shutters, through a hole in one of which the morning sun was streaming. Turning round he encountered the deeply solemn gaze of an owl which stood on a shelf at his elbow.
“No, doctor, I know no more how to open it than that idiot there,” he said, pointing to the owl, “but I’ll make inquiries of Mrs Murridge.”
The domestic fortunately knew the mysterious operations relative to the opening of a shop. With her assistance Mr Blurt took off the shutters, stowed them away in their proper niche, and threw open the door to the public with an air of invitation, if not hospitality, which deserved a better return than it received. With this news the doctor went back to the sick man.
“Mrs Murridge,” said Mr Blurt, when the doctor had gone, “would you be so good as mind the shop for a few minutes, while I go up-stairs? If any one should come in, just go to the foot of the stair and give two coughs. I shall hear you.”
On entering his brother’s room, he found him raised on one elbow, with his eyes fixed wildly on the door.
“Dear Fred,” he said tenderly, hurrying forward; “you must not give way to anxiety, there’s a dear fellow. Lie down. The doctor says you’ll get well if you only keep quiet.”
“Ay, but I can’t keep quiet,” replied the poor old man tremulously, while he passed his hand over the few straggling white hairs that lay on but failed to cover his head. “How can you expect me to keep quiet, Enoch, when my business is all going to the dogs for want of attention? And that boy of mine is such a stupid fellow; he loses or mislays the letters somehow—I can’t understand how. There’s confusion too somewhere, because I have written several times of late to people who owe me money, and sometimes have got no answers, at other times been told that they had replied, and enclosed cheques, and—”