It was in vain I protested and pleaded. I had to rise, and, dizzy and sick as I felt, to huddle on my clothes and go down stairs, utterly horrified at such inhuman treatment. Mrs Nash even expected, now I was up, I should go to the office; but this I positively declared I could not do, and was therefore permitted to make myself as comfortable as I could in the cheerless parlour, and there wait for the further development of my malady.
Towards mid-day I began to feel hungry, but dared not ask Mrs Nash for anything; it would be so unlike an invalid. But I rang the bell and implored her to send for a doctor, which she finally promised to do.
In the interval I began to feel more and more like myself. It was very aggravating, to be sure! Unless he came quickly the doctor would hardly think me ill at all. And yet I must be ill, even though it cost an effort!
When the doctor did arrive I did my best, by putting on a pained expression of countenance, by breathing rather hard and closing my eyes occasionally, to make him feel he had not come for nothing. But somehow I didn’t quite succeed. He smiled pleasantly as he just touched my pulse, and gave a single glance at my protruded tongue.
“There’s nothing wrong with him, except a black eye or so. Fighting, I suppose. Boys will be boys. Send him to bed early to-night, Mrs Nash, and he’ll be all right in the morning.”
“But what about—about the smallpox?” I inquired, forgetting that during the last speech I had been lying with my eyes closed, apparently unconscious.
The doctor laughed noisily, and Mrs Nash joined in the chorus.
“We’ll see about him when we catch him, my young fighting-cock,” replied he, and then went.
Then I hadn’t really got it! A nice fool I had made of myself! Larkins had, of course, announced it to all the lodgers at Mrs Nash’s, to my employers and fellow-clerks, and here was I all the while as right as a trivet, with nothing but a bruised face and an empty stomach afflicting me. Was ever luck like mine?
I took care to be in bed before the fellows got home that evening, but as I lay awake I could hear their laughter down stairs, and it was not hard to guess what it was about. Larkins came up to my room.