"I suppose," said Arthur Prayle, in a smooth bland voice, "that you administer tonic medicines--quinine and iron and the like?"

"O yes," said the doctor grimly. "That's exactly what we do, and it doesn't cure the patient in the least."

"But you give him cold bathing and exercise, doctor?"

"O yes, Mr Prayle; cold bathing and exercise, plenty of them; but they don't do any good."

"Hah! that is singular," said Prayle thoughtfully. "Would the failure be from want of perseverance, do you think?"

"Perhaps so. One doesn't know how much to persevere, you see."

"These matters are very strange--very well worthy of consideration and study, Doctor Scales."

"Very well worthy of consideration indeed, Mr Prayle," said the doctor; and then to himself: "This fellow gives me a nervous affection in the toes."

"I trust my remarks do not worry you, Lady Scarlett?" said Prayle, in his bland way.

"O no, not at all," replied that lady. "Pray do not think we cannot appreciate a little serious talk."

Prayle smiled as he looked at the speaker--a quiet sad smile, full of thankfulness; but it seemed to trouble Lady Scarlett, who hastened to join the conversation on the other side, replying only in monosyllables afterwards to Prayle's remarks.

The dinner pa.s.sed off very pleasantly, and at last the ladies rose and left the table, leaving the gentlemen to their wine, or rather to the modern subst.i.tute for the old custom--their coffee, after which they smoked their cigarettes in the veranda, and the conversation once more took a medical turn.

"I can't help thinking about that patient of yours, Jack," said Sir James. "Poor fellow! What a shocking affair!"

"Yes, it must be a terrible life," said Prayle. "Life, Arthur! it must be a sort of death," exclaimed Scarlett excitedly. "Poor fellow! What a state!"

"Well, sympathy's all very well," said the doctor, smiling in rather an amused way; "but I don't see why you need get excited about it."

"Oh, but it is horrible."

"Dreadful!" echoed Prayle.

"Then I must have been an idiot to introduce it here, where all is so calm and peaceful," said the doctor. "Fancy what a shock it would give us all if we were suddenly to hear an omnibus go blundering by. James Scarlett, you are a lucky man. You have everything a fellow could desire in this world: money, a delightful home, the best of health--"

"The best of wives," said Prayle softly. "Thank you for that, Arthur,"

said Scarlett, turning and smiling upon the speaker.

"Humph! Perhaps I was going to say that myself," said the doctor sourly. "Hah! you're a lucky man."

"Well, I don't grumble," said Scarlett, laughing. "You fellows come down here just when everything's at its best; but there is such a season as winter, you know."

"Of course there is, stupid!" said the doctor. "If there wasn't, who would care for fickle spring?"

"May the winter of adversity never come to your home, Cousin James,"

said Prayle softly: and he looked at his frank, manly young host with something like pathetic interest as he spoke.

"Thank you, old fellow, thank you.--Now, let's join the ladies."

"This fellow wants to borrow fifty pounds," growled Doctor Scales. Then after a pause--"There's that itching again in my toes."

Volume 1, Chapter VI.

DOCTOR SCALES HEARS A MORNING LECTURE.

"Morning, Monnick," said the doctor, who had resigned himself to his fate, and had pa.s.sed three days without attempting to escape from his pleasant prison.

"Morning, sir," said the old gardener, touching his hat.

"Sir James down yet?"

"Oh yes, sir, he's been in the peach-house this last hour."

"Has he? thanks," said the doctor, walking on in that direction, to hear his old friend's voice, directly after, humming away beneath the gla.s.s like some gigantic bee.

"Hallo, lazybones!" cried Sir James, who was busy at work with a syringe water-shooting the various insects that had affected a lodgment amongst his peach and nectarine trees.

"Lazybones; be hanged! why, it's barely five."

"Well, that's late enough this weather. I love being out early."

"Work of supererogation to tell me that, old fellow."

"So it is, Jack, and I suppose I'm a monomaniac. Fellows at the club laugh at me. They say, here you are--with plenty of money, which is true; heaps of brains--which is not; a t.i.tle and a seat in the house, openings before you to get some day in the cabinet, and you go down in the country and work like a gardener. They think I'm a fool."

"Let 'em," said the doctor, grimly.

"But I am a bit of a lunatic over garden matters, and country-life, Jack."

"So much the better," said the doctor, lighting a cigar and beginning to walk up and down. "Go on with your squirting."

"Shan't! I shall follow your bad habit." And Sir James took one of his friend's cigars and began to smoke. "Pleasure and profit together," he said; "it will kill insects."

"Nice place, this," said the doctor, glancing about the large light structure, with its healthy fruit trees growing vigorously; "but I should be careful about sudden changes. Might get a cold that would affect you seriously."

"Out, croaker!" cried Sir James; "I never catch cold." And he perched himself upon a pair of steps.

"Going to preach?" said the doctor, "because if so I'll sit down."

"Then sit, for I am, sir, a charity sermon; but there will be no collection after I have done."

"Go ahead," said the doctor.

"My dear guest," said Sir James, "there is nothing pleasanter than being, through your own foresight, on the right side of the hedge. The bull may bellow and snort, and run at the unfortunates who carelessly cross the dangerous meadow, but it does not hurt you, who can calmly shout to those in danger to run here or there to save themselves from horns or hoofs. In the same way how satisfactory to float at your ease when the flood comes, and to see your neighbours floundering and splashing as they struggle to bank or tree, hardly saving themselves, while you, armed as you are with that pocket. Noah's Ark of a safety-belt, philosophically think, what a pity it is that people will not take precautions against the inevitable."

"What are you aiming at, Jemmy?" said the doctor.

"Sir," said Sir James, waving his cigar; "I take this roundabout way of approaching that most popular though slightly threadbare subject, the weather; and as I do so I cannot help, in my self-satisfied way, feeling a kind of contemptuous compa.s.sion for those who, being agriculturally or horticulturally disposed, go out metaphorically without macintosh, umbrella, or goloshes. It is in this spirit that I feel but small pity for unfortunate Pat who, knowing that Erin is so green on account of its heavy rainfall, will persist in making the staple of his growth the highly satisfactory but tropical potato--that child of the sun which blights and rots and dies away in a humid atmosphere, the consequence of our heavy downpours of rain. 'But we must have potatoes,' say both Pat, and John Bull. True: then do as I, Ajax, the weather defier, have done: grow early sorts, which flourish, ripen, and can be housed before the setting in of the heavy autumnal rains."