“He was a tall, heavily-built man, with a full, high-coloured face, not intellectual in appearance, and with warm brown hair and side whiskers.”
He was out shooting one day with Mr. Calmady. A pheasant rose, and both men raised their guns, and the bird came down like lead.
“That’s my burd,” shouted Budd.
“I really think not; I am sure I brought it down,” said Mr. Calmady.
“It’s my burd, I zay. I’ll swear to it. Never missed in my life, any more than blundered in my profession. It’s mine.”
“Very well. Yours it shall be.”
Up rose another pheasant. Each hastened to load, when it turned out that the Doctor’s gun had not been discharged at all.
A gentleman writes me: “My mother remembers travelling by train in the same carriage with the Doctor. Two other men also got in; and one, who may have been the worse for liquor, began grossly to insult the other; whereupon the Doctor interfered and took the part of the insulted man. ‘What business is this of yours?’ shouted the offender. At this moment the train drew up in the Plymouth station. Dr. Budd jumped out, turned up his sleeves, squared his fists, and shouted, ‘Now then, you blackguard, I’ll show you what I have to do with it,’ and knocked him down on the platform.”
A friend took Budd out in his yacht. As the vessel skimmed through the smooth waters of the Sound—“He’s a fool, a cursed fool,” said Budd, “he who has the means and don’t keep a yacht.”
Presently the boat shot out beyond the breakwater, and began to pitch. Budd turned livid, and his lips leaden. “He’s a fool, a cursed fool,” said he, after he had stooped over the side, “he who, having the means, keeps a yacht; and he’s a cursed fool who, having a friend that has a yacht, allows himself to be over-persuaded to go out with him.”