“The more mischief the better sport,” said the crabbed old watchmaker. “I am blithe, though, that it's neither of the twa loons themselves.—What are ye bringing a corpse here for, ye fause villains?” he added, addressing the two apprentices, who, at the head of a considerable mob of their own class, some of whom bore evident marks of a recent fray, were carrying the body betwixt them.
“He is not dead yet, sir,” answered Tunstall.
“Carry him into the apothecary's, then,” replied his master. “D'ye think I can set a man's life in motion again, as if he were a clock or a timepiece?”
“For godsake, old friend,” said his acquaintance, “let us have him here at the nearest—he seems only in a swoon.”
“A swoon?” said Ramsay, “and what business had he to swoon in the streets? Only, if it will oblige my friend Master George, I would take in all the dead men in St. Dunstan's parish. Call Sam Porter to look after the shop.” So saying, the stunned man, being the identical Scotsman who had passed a short time before amidst the jeers of the apprentices, was carried into the back shop of the artist, and there placed in an armed chair till the apothecary from over the way came to his assistance. This gentleman, as sometimes happens to those of the learned professions, had rather more lore than knowledge, and began to talk of the sinciput and occiput, and cerebrum and cerebellum, until he exhausted David Ramsay's brief stock of patience.
“Bell-um! bell-ell-um!” he repeated, with great indignation; “What signify all the bells in London, if you do not put a plaster on the child's crown?”
Master George, with better-directed zeal, asked the apothecary whether bleeding might not be useful; when, after humming and hawing for a moment, and being unable, upon the spur of the occasion, to suggest any thing else, the man of pharmacy observed, that it would, at all events, relieve the brain or cerebrum, in case there was a tendency to the depositation of any extravasated blood, to operate as a pressure upon that delicate organ.
Fortunately he was adequate to performing this operation; and, being powerfully aided by Jenkin Vincent (who was learned in all cases of broken heads) with plenty of cold water, and a little vinegar, applied according to the scientific method practised by the bottle-holders in a modern ring, the man began to raise himself on his chair, draw his cloak tightly around him, and look about like one who struggles to recover sense and recollection.
“He had better lie down on the bed in the little back closet,” said Mr. Ramsay's visitor, who seemed perfectly familiar with the accommodations which the house afforded.
“He is welcome to my share of the truckle,” said Jenkin,—for in the said back closet were the two apprentices accommodated in one truckle-bed,—“I can sleep under the counter.”