"Oh, no!—no! It might have been, of course, if you'd let it go on."
"Ah! that's just it; it's the same with an engine, you know, 'a stitch in time.' I like to get expert advice at the start."
This was business from the doctor's point of view. He became serious. "Most true," he said. "Still, people will aggravate their complaints by so-called home treatments."
"The penny-wise policy, doctor, the results of combined ignorance and meanness."
"I wonder," Darwen said, later on, as he poured the contents of a medicine bottle down the bathroom waste pipe, "I wonder what in thunder this is, a sort of elixir of life served out to most people for most complaints at a varying price. Funny what stuff people will pour down their necks."
Some hours later, as they sat facing each other in their big easy chairs, Darwen said: "Didn't you say your guv'nor was a parson, Carstairs?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Because the time has arrived to trot him out."
"What do you mean?" Carstairs flushed rather angrily.
"I have not got a guv'nor," Darwen observed, sadly; "haven't any recollection of my guv'nor. He went down with the Peninsula coming home from Australia. He was a mining engineer."