may look in,” he said. “You’re a doctor, and won’t tell. They’re for the doctors.”
“Your customers, eh?”
“Customers?” said the old man sharply; “who said a word about customers?”
“You did. So you deal in those things?”
“No, no; not deal in ’em. I find one sometimes – very old – very old. Been in the earth a mort o’ years.”
As he spoke he watched the doctor curiously while he inspected the specimens of osteology in the oak chest. Then, taking up a tin canister from the bottom, he gave it a shake, the contents rattling loudly, and upon opening it he displayed it half full of white, sound teeth.
“Dentists,” he said, with a grin, which showed his own two or three blackened fangs. “They uses ’em. False teeth. People thinks they’re ivory. So they are.”
“Why, Moredock, what a wicked old wretch you are,” said the doctor. “I don’t wonder you feel afraid to die.”
“Wicked? No more wicked than my neighbours, doctor. Every one’s afraid to die, and wants to live longer. Wicked! How could I save a few pounds together, to keep me out o’ the workus when I grow’s old, if I didn’t do something like this?”
“Ah, how indeed?” said the doctor, looking half-wonderingly at the strange old being.
“And my grandchild, Dalily, up at the Rectory. Man must save – must save. Besides, it’s doing good.”
“Good, eh?”
“Yes,” said the old fellow, with a hideous grin. “Lots o’ them never did no good in their lives, and maybe they’re thankful now they’re dead to find that, after all, they’re some use to their fellow-creatures.”
“Ah! Moredock, people are always ready to find an excuse for their wrong-doing. Seems to me that I ought to expose you up at the Rectory.”
“Nay, you won’t tell the parson, doctor?” said the old man, with a chuckle.
“No, I shall say nothing, Moredock.”
“No, doctor, you can’t. You’re in it. You set me to get that for you.”
“There, stop that confounded laugh of yours, and take this quietly to the Manor House to-night. Shall you be well enough?”
“Have – have you got any more o’ that Hollands gin, doctor?” whispered the old man, with a leer.
“About another glassful, I dare say.”
“Then I shall be well enough to come, doctor. Nobody shall see what it is. And look here: you keep me alive and well, and you shall have anything you want, doctor. Parson’s master in the church, but I’m master outside, and in the tombs, and in the old Candlish morslem. Like to see in it, doctor?”
“Pah! not I. See enough of the miserable breed alive without seeing them dead. Good morning.”
He remounted his horse, and rode out of the village by the main road, to draw rein at a pretty ivy-covered villa, whose well-kept garden and general aspect betokened wealth and some refinement.
“Mrs Berens at home?” he asked, as the drag at a bell sent a silvery tinkle through the house.
The neat maid-servant drew back with a smile, and the doctor entered, and was shown into a pretty drawing-room, where he stood beating his boot with his riding-whip, and looking scornfully at the ornaments, lace, and gimcracks around.
Chapter Seven.
A Fresh Patient
“I always feel like a fly,” the doctor muttered – “a fly alighted upon a spider’s web. The widow wants a husband. I wish some one would snap her up.”
“Ah! doctor – at last,” said a pleasant voice, which sounded as if it had passed through swan’s-down, while a strong odour of violets helped the illusion.
“Yes, at last, Mrs Berens,” said the doctor, taking the extended, soft, white hand of the pleasant, plump lady of eight-and-thirty or forty, whose whole aspect was suggestive of a very pretty, delicate-skinned baby grown large. “Why, how well you look.”
“Oh, doctor!”
“Indeed you do. Why, from your note I was afraid that you were seriously ill.”
“And I have been, doctor. In such a low, nervous state. At one time I felt as if I should sink. But” – with a sigh – “I am better now.”
The lady waved her kerchief towards a chair, and seated herself upon an ottoman, where, in obedience to the suggestion, she once more laid her hand in the doctor’s firm white palm, wherein Jonadab Moredock’s gnarled, yellow, horny paw had so lately lain: and as the strong fingers closed over the delicate white flesh, and a couple glided to the soft round wrist, the patient sighed.
“Oh, doctor, I do feel so safe when you are here. It would be too hard to die so young.”
The doctor looked up quickly. “Now that’s wicked,” said the lady reproachfully, “because I said ‘so young.’ Well, I’m not quite forty, and that is young. Is my pulse very rapid?”
“No, no. A little accelerated, perhaps. You seem to have been fretting.”
“Yes, that’s it, doctor. I have,” said the lady.
“What a fool I am!” he said to himself, as he released the hand. Then aloud: “I see, I see. Little mental anxiety. You want tone, Mrs Berens.”
“Yes, doctor, I do,” she sighed.
“Now what should you say if I prescribed a complete change?”
“A complete change, doctor?” said the lady, whose pulse was now certainly accelerated.
“Yes. That will be better than any of my drugs. A pleasant little two months’ trip to Baden or Homburg, where you can take the waters and enjoy the fresh air.”
“Oh, doctor, I could not go alone.”
“Humph! No. It would be dull. Well, take a companion. Why not one of the parson’s sisters? Mary Salis – or, no,” he added, quickly, as he recalled certain family troubles that had been rumoured. “Why not Leo Salis?”
“Oh, no, doctor,” said the lady, with a decisive shake of the head. “I don’t think Miss Leo Salis and I would get on together long.”
“The other, then,” said the doctor.
“No, no. Prescribe some medicine for me.”
“But you don’t want medicine.”
“Indeed, doctor, but I do. I’ll take anything you like to prescribe.”
“But – ”
“Now, doctor, I am low and nervous, and you must humour me a little. I could not bear to be sent away. I should feel as if I had gone over there to die.”
“When
