He rang me up and I slipped round at once."
"One of these days," said I, "I'll murder that fellow."
He replied by gagging me with his beastly thermometer. Then he
felt my pulse and listened to my heart and stuck his fingers into
the corners of my eyes, so as to look at the whites; and when he
was quite satisfied with himself--there is only one animal more
self-complacent than your medical man in such circumstances, and
that is a dog who has gorged himself with surreptitious meat--he
ordained that I should forthwith go properly to bed and stay there
and be perfectly quiet until he came again, and in the meanwhile
swallow some filthy medicine which he would send round.
"One of these days," said he, rebukingly, "instead of murdering
your devoted Sergeant, you'll be murdering yourself, if you go on
such lunatic excursions. Of course I'm shocked at hearing about
Colonel Boyce, and I'm sorry for the poor lady, but why you should
have been made to half kill yourself over the matter is more than
I can understand."
"I happen," said I, "to be his only intimate friend in the place."
"You happen," he retorted, "to be a chronic invalid and the most
infernal worry of my life.
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