“Don't look much the matter with 'im,” said one of the assistants.
“You can't tell with a face like that,” said the furniture-remover. “It's wot you might call a 'appy face. Why, he was 'arf smiling as we, carried 'im up the stairs.”
“You're a liar,” said Mr. Scutts, opening his eyes.
“All right, mate,” said the furniture-remover; “all right. There's no call to get annoyed about it. Good old English pluck, I call it. Where d'you feel the pain?”
“All over,” said Mr. Scutts, briefly.
His neighbours regarded him with sympathetic eyes, and then, led by the furniture-remover, filed out of the room on tip-toe. The doctor, with a few parting instructions, also took his departure.
“If you're not better by the morning,” he said, pausing at the door, “you must send for your club doctor.”
Mr. Scutts, in a feeble voice, thanked him, and lay with a twisted smile on his face listening to his wife's vivid narrative to the little crowd which had collected at the front door. She came back, followed by the next-door neighbour, Mr. James Flynn, whose offers of assistance ranged from carrying Mr. Scutts out pick-a-back when he wanted to take the air, to filling his pipe for him and fetching his beer.
“But I dare say you'll be up and about in a couple o' days,” he concluded. “You wouldn't look so well if you'd got anything serious the matter; rosy, fat cheeks and——”
“That'll do,” said the indignant invalid. “It's my back that's hurt, not my face.”