Taking her cue, Si'Wren raised her eyebrows quickly and nodded as she stepped forward and bowed wordlessly, holding out to the old doctor the proffered items which she had brought.
"Ah yes," said the Physician, nodding as he sniffed and tasted the various samples with evident satisfaction. "Whoever prepared these has done well!"
He turned and said to the dental patient, "You must rinse with this tea of borage leaf, or the grass that the cattle eat if you run out too soon. Perhaps also, a little dandelion. Blend it with a pinch of this barberry herb," he held out in his weathered palm a small leather pouch noosed at the neck with a cord of dried gut which Si'Wren had furnished him, "and flush the socket faithfully for seven days. It will stop the pain and bleeding almost immediately, and you will suffer little or no infection."
Besides the herbs he was dispensing, the verbal prescription which the sage Physician had just uttered was known to stop bleeding, and the anesthetic effect of mere words was already well-known to mothers the world over in the eternal pooh-poohing of their childrens' many little wounds of life.
The man from the caravan tried to grin and nod and bow his agonized thanks all at the same time while moving respectfully backwards to go and do as instructed. The other members of the caravan gathered close around him to escort him carefully away. One held up a wine flask, making obvious his intention to get his comrade drunk, which would afford obvious immediate relief but no doubt add to his later miseries when he should awaken with a biting hangover the next day.
Seizing the opportunity, Habrunt leaned conspiratorially close, and when the Physician inclined his ear Habrunt whispered so low that none could hear what was said.
As he listened, the Physician's expression became, by turns, first shocked, then angry, and finally—resigned and infinitely saddened.
He turned his head once, to look critically at the two one-eyed boys waiting on the sidelines. If he felt anything, it no longer showed on his wise old face as he studied their identical physical maladies. Finally, he nodded, turning away from a still-whispering Habrunt and cutting off the other in mid-sentence.
He was an iron-willed, dutiful man who knew how to do what must be done when called upon to make decisions. It was not his business to judge the Master of this House if he, too, did what he saw fit. But he sighed, a heavy, tired gesture, as if all the evils of the world were a weight upon his shoulders alone.
Out of a vague sense of fairness, he decided to examine the smaller boy first, the gentle one who had been innocently victimized, while saving the bully, on Habrunt's judicious advice, until second.