VERY HARD CASH.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND."

CHAPTER XIV.

IN the narrative of home events I skipped a
little business, not quite colourless, but irrelevant
to the love passages then on hand. It has
however a connexion with the curious events
now converging to a point: so, with the reader's
permission, I will place it in logical sequence,
disregarding the order of time. The day Dr.
Sampson splashed among the ducks, and one of
them hid till dinner, the rest were seated at
luncheon, when two patients were announced as
waiting—Mr. and Mrs. Maxley. Sampson refused
to see them, on this ground: "I will not
feed, and heal." But Mrs. Dodd interceded, and
he yielded. "Well, then, show them in here;
they are better cracters than pashints." On this,
a stout fresh-coloured woman, the picture of
health, was ushered in, and curtseyed all round.

"Well, what is the matter now?" inquired
Sampson, rather roughly.

"Be seated, Mrs. Maxley," said Mrs. Dodd,
benignly.

"I thank ye kindly, ma'am;" and she sat down.
"Doctor, it is that pain."

"Well, don't say 'that pain.' Describe it.
Now listen, all of ye; ye're goen to get a clinical
lecture."

"If you please, ma'am," said the patient, "it
takes me here under my left breest, and runs
right to my elbow, it do: and bitter bad 'tis
while it do last; chokes me, mostly; and I feel
as I must die: and if I was to move hand or
fut, I think I should die, that I do."

"Poor woman," said Mrs. Dodd.

"Oh, she isn't dead yet," cried Sampson,
cheerfully." She'll sell addled eggs over all our
tombstones: that is to say, if she minds what I
bid her. When was your last spasm?"

"No longer agone than yestereen, ma'am;
and so I said to my master, 'the doctor he is
due to-morrow Sally up at Albion tells me;
and——'"

"Whisht! whisht! who cares what you said
to Jack, and Jill said to you? What was the
cause?"

"The cause! What, of my pain? He says,
'what was the cause?'"

"Ay, the cause. Just obsairve, jintlemen,"
said Sampson, addressing imaginary students,
"how startled they all are, if a docker deviates
from profissional habits into sceince, and takes
the right eend of the stick for once b' asking for
the cause."

"The cause was the will of God, I do suppose,"
said Mrs. Maxley.

"Stuff!" shouted Sampson, angrily. "Then
why come to mortal me to cure you?"

Alfred put in his oar. "He does not mean the
'final cause;' he means the 'proximate cause.'"

"My poor dear creature, I baint no Latiner,"
objected the patient.

Sampson fixed his eyes sternly on the slippery
dame. "What I want to know is, had you been
running up-stairs? or eating fast? or drinking
fast? or grizzling over twopence? or quarrelling
with your husband? Come now, which was it?"

"Me quarrel with my man! We haven't
never been disagreeable, not once, since we went
to church a pair and came back a couple. I don't
say 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 or two—
y' infairnal quibbler—was it just before your
last spasm, eh?"

"Well, it might; I am not gainsaying that:
but you said quarrel, says you; 'quarrel' it were
your word; and I defy all Barkton, gentle and
simple, to say as how me and my master——"

"Whisht! whisht! Now, jintlemen, ye See
what the great coming sceince—the sceince of
Healing—has to contind with. The dox are all
fools; but one: and the pashints are lyres,
ivery man Jack. N' listen me; y' have got a
disease that you can't eradicate; but you may
muzzle it for years, and die of something quite
different when your time's up."

"Like enough, sir. If you please, ma'am, Dr.
Stephenson do blame my indigestion for it."

"Dr. Stephenson'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
mustn't grizzle about money; you mustn't
gobble, nor drink your beer too fast."

"You are wrong, doctor; I never drink no
beer: it costs."

"Your catlap, then. And, above all, no grizzling!