“Out of sorts, eh?” said Bolus, fixing him with his keen professional look. “What’s amiss with you? Been punting too much, or backed the St. Leger favourite too heavily?” and he took St. George’s wrist between his thumb and finger.
“Neither one nor the other,” said Kester, with a little hollow laugh. “I seem to be getting out of repair generally. Some little cog or wheel inside won’t act properly, I suppose, and so the whole machine is getting out of gear.”
“So long as we keep the mainspring right there’s not much to be afraid of,” said Bolus with his expansive professional smile, which was as stereotyped and fictitious as professional smiles, whether of ballet-girls or doctors, always are.
“Your pulse is certainly not what it ought to be,” went on Bolus, in his airy, graceful way, as though he were imparting a piece of information of the pleasantest kind; “but then how seldom one’s pulse is what it ought to be. Do you ever experience any little irregularity in the action of the heart?”
“Yes, frequently. Sometimes it seems to stop beating for a second or two.”
“Yes yes—just so,” said Bolus, soothingly.
“And you find yourself getting out of breath more quickly than you used to do, especially when you walk a little faster than ordinary, or have to climb a number of stairs?”
“Yes, a little thing nowadays puts me out of puff.”
“Precisely so. We are none of us so young as we were twenty years ago. And you sometimes feel as if you wanted an extra pillow under your head at night?”
“How the deuce do you know that?” said Kester, with a puzzled look.