“Here’s a guinea,” said Budd. “Go and get us a bottle of wine and make us apple dumplings, and plenty of these latter. Will be here at one o’clock.”
At the appointed hour, Budd and his assistant arrived. The table was spread with a clean cloth, and humble but neat ware was placed on it—all in the room where the patient was lying gasping for breath. Budd and John seated themselves one at each end of the table; and the dumplings were produced, round, hard, hot, and steaming. Budd took one up in his hands, turned it about, and, all at once, threw it at the head of his assistant, and caught him full crash between the eyes. John sprang up. “Two can play at that game!” shouted he, and catching up another dumpling threw it at the Doctor, who dodged, and the apple burst its crust and remained clinging to the wall. This was the beginning of a war of pelting with dumplings; and it so tickled the patient that he burst out laughing and burst the quinsy.
He was visiting a labouring man who was weak, and Budd saw that what he needed more than physic was good nourishing diet. Now that day he was having mock-turtle soup at his table, so he sent a bowl of it to his patient. The man looked into the bowl, saw the pieces of calf’s head floating in it, shook his head, thrust it away, and said, “I can’t take that, there’s too much of a surgeon’s trade in it to suit my stomach, sure ’nuff.”
Budd was visiting a farmer in the country. Every time he left, a prentice boy on the farm came with an anxious face to inquire how his master was.
The Doctor was touched with the intense interest the lad took in the condition of his master. One day as he left and the boy asked after the farmer, Budd shook his head and said, “I fear it’s going bad with him.”
Thereupon the boy burst out into a loud bohoo of tears and sobs.
“There, there,” said the Doctor, “don’t take on so, my lad. It can’t be helped.”
“Oh, you’d take on if you was in my place,” sobbed the youth, “for missus makes us eat all the stock, pigs and what not, as dies on the farm.”
He was visited in his consulting room by a patient who had lock-jaw.
“Come upstairs,” said he; “I can do nothing with you here.” He threw open the door and preceded the man up the flight of stairs. When he had got some way up he suddenly lurched against his patient, upset him, and sent him rolling heels over head to the bottom of the staircase.