I entered the house as proud as Lucifer, telling my friends that they should crack a bottle or two of my best port; for Tim had given me a hint that my cellar contained some of the best in the world. "And," said Tim, giving me a wink, "we may take our fun now, as sister Margaret—" at that name I felt a cold creeping in my bones—"as sister Margaret is still in the country." The ague left me—"I did not think it," he continued, "worth while to alarm her."
"The Lord be thanked!" said I; though why I said it, I knew no more than the man in the moon.
We sat down, we drank, and we made merry—that is to say, they made merry: as for myself, a circumstance occurred which nipped my pleasure in the bud, and began to make me doubt whether, in exchanging the condition of Sheppard Lee for that of John H. Higginson, I had not made somewhat of a bad bargain.
I had managed, somehow or other, in the course of the night, to stump my toe, or wrench my foot; and, though the accident caused me but little inconvenience at the time, the member had begun gradually to feel uneasy; and now, as I sat at my table, it grew so painful that I was forced to draw off my boot. But this giving me little relief, and finding that my foot was swollen out of all shape and beauty, my brother Tim pronounced it a severe strain, and recommended that I should call in my family physician, Dr. Boneset, a very illustrious man, and fine fellow, who at that moment chanced to drive by in his coal-black gig, which looked, as physicians' gigs usually look, as if in mourning for a thousand departed patients.
"What's the matter?" said the doctor.
"Why, doctor," said I, "I have given my foot a confounded wrench; I scarce know how; but it is as big and as hot as a plum-pudding."
"Hum, ay!—very unlucky," said the doctor: "off with your stocking, and let me look at your tongue. Pulse quite feverish. Fine port!" he said, drinking off a glass that Tim had poured him, and cocking his eye like one who means to be witty, "fine port, sir; but one can't float in it for ever without paying port-charges. A very gentlemanly disease, at all events. It lies between port and porter."
"Port and porter! disease!" said I, slipping off my stocking as he directed, without well knowing what he meant. My foot was as red as a salamander, swelled beyond all expression, and, while I drew the stocking, it hurt me most horribly.
"Zounds doctor!" said I, "can that be a wrench?"
"No," said the doctor, "it's the wrencher—genuine podagra, 'pon honour."