CHAPTER XII.

Clutha Leader, Volume V, Issue 220, 27 September 1878, Page 7

CHAPTER XII.

I>. *In thenarrative of home events Iskip--7 ped a little business, not quite colourless i but irrevelent to tbe love passages then I on hand. It has however a connexion > with the curious events now converging ty* to a point: **o, with the reader's permis|V 7 sion, I will place it in logical sequence, 177 disregarding the order of time. The day lyDr Sampson splashed among the ducks |V* and, one of them hid till dinner, the |V rest were seated at luncheon, when two ?"' patients were announced as waiting* — IV r ,Mr.ahd Mrs Maxley. Sampson refused llfV to see them, on this ground. 'I will not || - feed and heal.' But Mis Dodd interlf 7 ceded, and he yielded. * Well, then, p. .-.show them in here; tbey are better j Ipjcracters than pashints.' On ibis, a Rr* "Stout fresh-coloured woman, the picture j|7 of health, was ushered in, and curtseyed j|y all; round. * Well, what is the matter p .now? inquired Sampson, rather rough I}'. |f Vf Be seated, Mrs Maxley/ said Mrs Dodd, |2 benignly. ||y '* I thank ye kindly, ma'am ;' and she I* sat down. 'Doctor, it is that pain.' |Jvy ,«W e )l, don't say ' that pain.' DeI it;v Now listen all of ye ; ye're | goeh'rto get a clinical lecture.' !>— ™* VEf -you please, ma'am,' sain the I patient," it takes me here untier my left | breest, and runs right to my elbow, ie | do:, and bitter bad 'tis while"it do last; §VT chokes roe, mostly ; and I feel as I must I die : and if I was to move hand or fut, 1 'I think I should die, that I do.' | * ' Poor woman,' said Mrs Dodd. |^ 'Ob, she isn't dead yet,' cried Samp- | son cheerfully. * She'll sell addled eggs j over all our tombstones : that is to say, | if she minds what I bid her. When was | Vyou? last spasm ?' I ' 'No longer agone than yestereen, £ ma'am; and so I said to my masfeV, | . i( The doctor he is due to-morrow Sally lup at ii Ibibn tells me ; and " ' | Ar- ' Whisht ! whisht ! who carps what I r y6u said to Jack, and Jill said to you? I What was the cause?' I V 'The cause ! What, of my pain ? § He says, " What was the cause ?" ' | ' Ay, the cause. Just obsairve jintle- | men,' said Sampson, addressing imaI ginary students, * how startled they all | are if a docker deviates from prcfissional | habits into sceincp, and takes the right | eend of the stick for once b asking for I the cause.' I ' The cause was the will of God Ido I suppose,' said Mrs Maxley. | f Stuff !' shouted Sampson, angrily. I ' Then why come to mortal me to cure | your "... | Alfred put in his oar. 'He does not | mean the " final cause ;" he means the | " proximate cause." ' | 'My poor dear creature, I baint no I Lariner,' objected the patient. I Sampson fixed his eyes sternly on the V -slippery dame. • What I want to know i. is, had you been running up-srairs? or f eating fast? or drinking fast? or grizI zling over twopence? or quarrelling " your husband ? Come now, which was f it?' A (Me quarrel with my man ! We I haven't never been disagreeable, not V dnCe, since we went to church a pair V and came back a couple. I don't say f but what we mayn't have had a word or ? two at odd times, as married folk will.' ' And the last time you had a word i or two — y' infairnal quibbler — was it i: just before your last spasm, eh V | * Well, it might ; lam not gainsayI ing that : but you said quarrel, says I you ; "quarrel" it were your word; and 1 I defy all Barkton, gentle and simple, \ to asy as how me and my master ' : ' Whisht I whisht! Now jintlemen, r ye see what the great coming sceince — I tbe sceince of Healing — Iras to contind t with. The dox are all fools ; but one : f and the pashints are lyres ivery man A Jack. N' listen me ;y' have got a disi ease that you can't eradicate ; but you may, muzzle it for years, and die of somel, thing quite different when your time's '; up-' * Like enough, sir. If you please, ma'am,, Dr Stephenson do blame my A iv digestion for it.' * Dr Stepbenso's an ass.' ; ' Dear heart, how cantankerous you be. .••To be sure Dr Osmond he says ■ no;: it's muscular, says he.' | .' Dr Osmond's an ijjit. List me; You {■ musn't; grizzle about money ; you I musn't gobble, nor drink beer too fast.' f * You are wrong, doctor ; I never I drink no beer : it costs.' | ' f Your catlap, then. And, above all, 7 no grizzling! Go to church whenever t you can without losing a farthing It's I medicinal ; soothes the brain, and takes I it off worldly cares. And have no words |: with your husband: or he'll outlive you; I it's his only chance of getting the last I word/Care killed a cat, a naniroal with |; eight lives more than a chatterbox. If | you worry or excite your brain, little I Maxley, you will cook your own goose | — by a quick fire.' I i' Dear heart, these "be unked sayings. I Won't ye give me nothing to make me fc better, sir?' | " l No ; I never tinker; Igo to the | root : you may.buy a vile of chlorofm | and stake; a puff if you feel premonory | symps, but a quiet brain is your only | real chance. Now slope, and send the \A tnale'screw.: j r - fj_ Y a. /'^hiat^l -will, sir. Your sarvant, |7 doctor; your sarvant, ma'am ; sarvant py all the company.'' | Mrs Dodd hoped the poor woman

I li;**; jT'tMin-u" very serious the matter, i ' 'Alt. lz is a mornd disease,' replied Sampson, rs cool as a cucumber. •' She hns got agina pictoris, or brist-pang, a disorder that admirably exirnplifies the pretinsions of midicine t' a science.' And with this he dashed into monologue. . Maxley's tall gaunt form came slouching* in, and traversed the floor, pounding it with haavy nailed boots. He seated himself gravely at MrsDodd's invitation, took a handkerchief out oi his hat, wiped his face, and surveyed the company, grand and calm. In James Maxley all was ponderous ; his head was huge ; his mouth, when it fairly opened, revealed a chasm, and thence issued a voice naturally stentorian by its volume and native vigour. But, when tbe owner of this incarnate bassoon had a mind to say something sagacious, he sank at once from his habitual roar to a sound scarce above a whisper — a contrast mighty comical to hear, though on paper nil. ' Well, what is it, Maxley ? Rheumatism again ?' ' No, that it ain't/ bellowed Maxley, defiantly. ' What then ? Come, look sharp.' 1 Well, then, doctor, I'll tell you. I'm very sore troubled with a — a — a — , mouse.' This malady, announced in the tone of a proclamation, and coming after so much solemn preparation, amused the party considerably, although parturient mountains had ere then produced muscipular abortions. ■* A mouse !' said Sampson, disdainfully. ■* Where ?up your sleeve ? Don't come to me : go t' a sawbones and have your arm cut off. I've seen 'em mutilate a pashint for as little.' Maxley said it was not up his sleeve, worse luck. On this, Alfred hazarded a conjecture. Might it not have gone down his throat 1 ' Took his potatoe-trap for the pantry door. Ha ! ha !' ' Ay, I hear ye, young man, a laughing at your own sport,' said Maxley, winking his eye ; ' but 'taint the biggest mouth as catches the most : yon sits yonder fit to burst, but (with a roar like a lion) ye never offers me none ori"t, neither sup nor bit.' At this sudden turn of Mr Maxley's wit, light and playful as a tap of the old English quarter- staff, they were a. little staggered, ail but Edward, who laughed, and supplied him zealously with sandwiches. * You're a gentleman, you are,' said Max'ey, looking full at Sampson and Alfred to point the contradistinction. Having thus disposed of his satirists, he contemplated the sandwiches with an enquiring and philosophic eye. * Well,' said he, after a long and thoughtful inspection, 'you gentlefolks won't die of hard work ; your servants must cut the very meat to fit your mouths.' And not to fall behind the gentry in a great and useful department of intelligence, he made precisely one mouthiul of each sandwich. Mrs Dodd was secretly amazed, and, taking care not to be noticed by Maxley, said confidentially, * Monsieur avait bien raison ; le souris a passe par la.' The plate cleared, and washed down with a tumbler of port, Maxley resumed and informed the doctor that the mouse was at this moment in his garden eat ing his bulbs. ' And I be come here to put an end to her, if I've any luck at all.' Sampson told him he needn't trouble. * Nature bas put an end to her as long as her body.' Mr Maxley was puzzled for a moment ; then opened his mouth from ear to ear in a guffaw that made the glasses ring*. His humour was perverse : he was wit-proof and fun-proof, but at a feeble jest would sometimes roar like a lion inflated with laughing gas. But laughed he ever so loud and long, he always ended abruptly and without gradation; his laugh was a clean spadeful dug out of Merriment. He resumed his gravity and his theme ail in an instant : * White arsenic she won't look at, for I've tried her, but they tell me there's another sweetmeat come up, which they call it strick-nine.' ' Hets ! let the poor beasty alone. Life's as sweet tit as tus.' ' If you was a gardener, you'd feel for the bulbs, not for the varmin,' remonstrated Maxley, rather arrogantly. ' But bein' a man of science, I feel fbr th' higher organisation. Mice are a part of Nature, as much as marketgardeners,' 'So be stoats ; and adders, and doctors.' Samson appealed ; * Jintlemen, here's a pretty pashint : reflects on our lairned profission, aud it never cost him a guinea ; for the dog never pays.' ' .Don't let my chaff choke ye, doctor. That warn't meant for you altogether. So if ye have got a little bit of that 'ere about you ' •- ' I'm not a ratcatcher, my man : I don't go with dith in my pocket, like the surgeons that carry a lancet. And if I had Murder in both pockets, you shouldn't get any. Here's a greedy dog ! got a thousand pounds in the bank; and grudges his Healer a guinea, and his mouse a stand-up bite.' 'Now, who have been a telling you lies?' inquired Maxley, severely. 'My missus, for a farthing. I'm not a thousand pound man : and it's all safe "at Hardies: " , here he went from his roar to his whisper, * I don't hold with Lunnon banks j they be like my

missus' .*■-■ ei'gp. : all one outside, and the rotten ones only known by breaking. WpII (loud) I be pr9tty close, I don't deny it ; but (confidentially) my missus beats me. I look twice at a penny; but she looks twice at both sides of a halfpenny before she will let him go : and it's her being so close have raised all this here bobbery ; and so I told her; says I, ' Missus,— lf you would but leave an end of a dip, or a paring of cheese, about your cupboard, she would bide at home ; but you hungers her so, you drives her afield right on'atop o' my roots.' ' Oh,' says my missus, 'if l" was to be as wasteful as you be, where should we be, come Christmas Day ? Every tub on its own bottom,' says she ; ' man and wife did oug-ht to keep theirselves to theirselves, she to the house, and I to the garden ;' *so be it,' says I, ' and by the same toaken, don't let me catch them ' Ns' in my garden again, or I'll spoil their clucking* and scratching/ j say 8 I, for I'll twist their da lied necks : ye've got a yard,' says I, ' and a roost, and likewise a turnpika, you and your poultry: so bide at home the lot; and don't come a scratching o' me,' and with that we had a ripput ; and she took one ot her pangs ; and then I behoved to knock under; and that is alius the way if ye quarrel with women folk ; they are sworn to get the better of ye by hook or by crook, now dooe j give me a bit of that ere, to quiet this ; here, as eats me up by the roots and sets my missus and me by the ears.' 'Justum ac tenacem propositi virum,' whispered Alfred to Edward. Sampson told him angrily to go to a certain great personage. ' Not afore my betters,' whispered Mr Maxley, smit with a sudden respect for etiquette. ' Won't ye now T 1 I'll see you hanged first, ye miserly old assassin.' ' Then I have nothing to thank you for,' roared Maxley, and made his adieux, ignoring with marked contempt the false physician who declined to doctor the foe of his domestic peace and crocuses. 'Quite a passage of arms,' said Edward. 'Yes,' said Mrs Dodd, 'and of bludgeons and things, rather than tbe polished rapier. What expressions to fall from two highly educated gentlemen ! Slope — Potato- trap — Sawbones — Catlap— je n'en finirais pas.' She then let them know that she meditated a 'dictionary of jargon;' in hopes that its bulk might strike terror into honest citizens, and excite an antijargon league to save the English language, now on the verge of dissolution. Sampson was pleased with this threat. * Now, that is odd,' said he. 4 Wby I am compilin h vocablary myself. I call 't th' ass-ass-ins ' dickshinary ; showing how, by the use of mealy-mouthed an d'exotic phrases, knaves can lead fools by th' ear t' a vilent dith. F'r instance; if one was to say to John Bull, * Now I'll cut a great gash in your arm and let your blood run till ye drop down senseless,' he'd take fright and say, ' Call another time!' So the profissional ass-ass-in words it thus; ' I'll bleed you from a large orifice till th' occurrence of syn- , cope.' All right, sis John : he's bled from a lar j'orifice and dies three days after of th' assassin's knife hid in a sheath o' goose grease. But I'll blow the gaff with my dickshinary.' ' Meantime there is another contribution to mine,' said Mrs Dodd. And they agreed in the gaiety of their hearts to compare their rival Lexicons.