“So can I,” said Tunstall, “and the poor fellow can have the bed all night.”
“Sleep,” said the apothecary, “is, in the opinion of Galen, a restorative and febrifuge, and is most naturally taken in a truckle-bed.”
“Where a better cannot be come by,”—said Master George; “but these are two honest lads, to give up their beds so willingly. Come, off with his cloak, and let us bear him to his couch—I will send for Dr. Irving, the king's chirurgeon—he does not live far off, and that shall be my share of the Samaritan's duty, neighbour Ramsay.”
“Well, sir,” said the apothecary, “it is at your pleasure to send for other advice, and I shall not object to consult with Dr. Irving or any other medical person of skill, neither to continue to furnish such drugs as may be needful from my pharmacopeia. However, whatever Dr. Irving, who, I think, hath had his degrees in Edinburgh, or Dr. Any-one-beside, be he Scottish or English, may say to the contrary, sleep, taken timeously, is a febrifuge, or sedative, and also a restorative.”
He muttered a few more learned words, and concluded by informing Ramsay's friend in English far more intelligible than his Latin, that he would look to him as his paymaster, for medicines, care, and attendance, furnished, or to be furnished, to this party unknown.
Master George only replied by desiring him to send his bill for what he had already to charge, and to give himself no farther trouble unless he heard from him. The pharmacopolist, who, from discoveries made by the cloak falling a little aside, had no great opinion of the faculty of this chance patient to make reimbursement, had no sooner seen his case espoused by a substantial citizen, than he showed some reluctance to quit possession of it, and it needed a short and stern hint from Master George, which, with all his good-humour, he was capable of expressing when occasion required, to send to his own dwelling this Esculapius of Temple Bar.
When they were rid of Mr. Raredrench, the charitable efforts of Jenkin and Francis, to divest the patient of his long grey cloak, were firmly resisted on his own part.—“My life suner—my life suner,” he muttered in indistinct murmurs. In these efforts to retain his upper garment, which was too tender to resist much handling, it gave way at length with a loud rent, which almost threw the patient into a second syncope, and he sat before them in his under garments, the looped and repaired wretchedness of which moved at once pity and laughter, and had certainly been the cause of his unwillingness to resign the mantle, which, like the virtue of charity, served to cover so many imperfections.
The man himself cast his eyes on his poverty-struck garb, and seemed so much ashamed of the disclosure, that, muttering between his teeth, that he would be too late for his appointment, he made an effort to rise and leave the shop, which was easily prevented by Jenkin Vincent and his comrade, who, at the nod of Master George, laid hold of and detained him in his chair.
The patient next looked round him for a moment, and then said faintly, in his broad northern language—“What sort of usage ca' ye this, gentlemen, to a stranger a sojourner in your town? Ye hae broken my head—ye hae riven my cloak, and now ye are for restraining my personal liberty! They were wiser than me,” he said, after a moment's pause, “that counselled me to wear my warst claithing in the streets of London; and, if I could have got ony things warse than these mean garments,”—(“which would have been very difficult,” said Jin Vin, in a whisper to his companion,)—“they would have been e'en ower gude for the grips o' men sae little acquented with the laws of honest civility.”
“To say the truth,” said Jenkin, unable to forbear any longer, although the discipline of the times prescribed to those in his situation a degree of respectful distance and humility in the presence of parents, masters, or seniors, of which the present age has no idea—“to say the truth, the good gentleman's clothes look as if they would not brook much handling.”