“You put the leeches on?”
“I reckon I put ‘em in, sir. I read what you’d wrote and we understood you to say that they was to be fried, so my Mary, her put the pan on th’ vire, and a pat o’ butter and a shred o’ onion, and fried ’em, live as they were. But they was cruel nasty, like bits of leather. But Lord! for mussy’s sake, Doctor, don’t ax me to ate any more o’ them things. I’d rayther take a whole box o’ pills all to wance.”
A gentleman called on him one day just before Budd sat down to dinner, and brought with him his brother suffering from lock-jaw.
“I’m not going to be interfered with at my dinner for you or the King,” said Budd; then to his servant, “Here, George, lay two plates for these gentlemen, the one who can’t speak place opposite me at the bottom of the table, and for the other gentleman in the middle on my left.”
Whether they would or no, the two visitors were obliged to comply; they knew the imperious nature of the Doctor, and that unless he were humoured, he would kick them out of the house and refuse to attend to the patient.
A roast leg of mutton was placed before Dr. Budd; he proceeded to carve a great slice, then took it and threw the slab of meat in the face of the gentleman on his left, who staggered back and hastily seized his napkin to wipe his face and sweep the juice from his shirt-front and waistcoat. But before he had cleansed himself, slap came another slice of mutton in his face, and then a third. At this the man with the lock-jaw burst into a roar of laughter.
“There,” said Budd, “I have cured you: you will have to pay for a new waistcoat for your brother, it’s messed with grease.”
Budd was sent for to visit a poor man who was bad with quinsy, could not swallow, could not even speak. Said the Doctor to the patient’s wife, “I be coming to dine with you, I and my assistant John.”
“Lor’ a mussy, sir, I ain’t got nothing fit for gentlevolks to dine on here,” said the amazed woman.