Here
comes your medicine. You never drink champagne in the middle of the
day, of course?"
"Oh, no."
"Then it will be all the better medicine."
He made both mistress and maid eat the thin slices of beef and drink a
glass of champagne.
While they were thus fortifying themselves he wrote his address on some
stamped envelopes, and gave them to Lady Bassett, and told her she had
better write to him at once if anything occurred. "You must also write
to me if you really cannot get to see your husband. Then I will come
down myself, with the public press at my back. But I am sure that will
not be necessary in Dr. Suaby's asylum. He is a better Christian than I
am, confound him for it! You went too soon; your husband had been
agitated by the capture; Suaby was away; Salter had probably applied
what he imagined to be soothing remedies, leeches--a blister--morphia.
Result, the patient was so much worse than he was before they touched
him that Salter was ashamed to let you see him. Having really excited
him, instead of soothing him, Sawbones Salter had to pretend that _you_
would excite him. As if creation contained any mineral, drug simple,
leech, Spanish fly, gadfly, or showerbath, so soothing as a loving wife
is to a man in affliction. New reading of an old song:
'If the heart of a man is oppressed with cares, It makes him much worse
when a woman appears.
Pages:
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287