“Oh, my buzzum!” exclaimed Tom, laying his hand on his breast; “you’ve a’most bu’st me, sir. W’at’s wrong, sir?”
“Go for the doctor, Tom, quick! run like the wind. Take the freshest horse; fly, Tom, Charley’s poisoned—laudanum; quick!”
“’Eavens an’ ’arth!” ejaculated the groom, wheeling round, and stalking rapidly off to the stable like a pair of insane compasses, while the senior clerk returned to the bedroom, where he found Mr. Kennedy still raving, Peter Mactavish still aghast and deadly pale, and Harry Somerville staring like a maniac at his young friend, as if he expected every moment to see him explode, although, to all appearance, he was sleeping soundly, and comfortably too, notwithstanding the noise that was going on around him. Suddenly Harry’s eye rested on the label of the half-empty phial, and he uttered a loud, prolonged cheer.
“It’s only tincture of—”
“Wild cats and furies!” cried Mr. Kennedy, turning sharply round and seizing Harry by the collar, “why d’you kick up such a row, eh?”
“It’s only tincture of rhubarb,” repeated the boy, disengaging himself and holding up the phial triumphantly.
“So it is, I declare,” exclaimed Mr. Kennedy, in a tone that indicated intense relief of mind; while Peter Mactavish uttered a sigh so deep that one might suppose a burden of innumerable tons weight had just been removed from his breast.
Charley had been roused from his slumbers by this last ebullition; but on being told what had caused it, he turned languidly round on his pillow and went to sleep again, while his friends departed and left him to repose.
Tom Whyte failed to find the doctor. The servant told him that her master had been suddenly called to set a broken leg that morning for a trapper who lived ten miles down the river, and on his return had found a man waiting with a horse and cariole, who carried him violently away to see his wife, who had been taken suddenly ill at a house twenty miles up the river, and so she didn’t expect him back that night.
“An’ where has ’e been took to?” inquired Tom.