“Hallo, Sawbones!”
The speaker raised his head from the white pillow of the massive, old-fashioned four-post bed, and set the ornamental bobs and tags of the heavy bullion fringe upon the great cornice quivering. He was a sharp-faced, cleanly shaven man, freshly scraped, and the barber who had been operating was in the act of replacing his razor and strop as these words were spoken to the calm, thoughtful-looking person who entered the substantially furnished room.
“Good morning, Mr Masters. Had a quiet night?”
“Bah! You know I haven’t. How is a man to have a good night when ten thousand imps are boring into him with red-hot iron, and jigging his nerves till he is half mad! Here, you: be off!”
“Without brushing your hair, sir?”
“Brush a birch broom! My head never wants brushing. You know that.”
He gave himself a jerk, and the short, crisp, wavy grey locks glistened in the bright morning sun, which streamed in through the window.
“Look here; you can cut it to-morrow when you come—if I’m not dead. If I am, you may have a bit to keep in remembrance.”
“Oh, not so bad as that, sir, I hope. Dr Thorpe is too—”
“That’ll do,” said the man in the bed sharply. “I kept to you because you didn’t chatter like the ordinary barber brood. I may get better, so don’t spoil your character. Be off!”
The barber smiled, bowed, and left the room to doctor and patient.
“Well?” said the latter, meeting his attendant’s searching eye. “I’m not gone.”
“No; and I do not mean to let you go if I can help it.”
“Ho!—But perhaps you can’t.”
“God knows, sir; but I shall do my best. I would rather, though, that you would let me bring in some one in consultation.”
“And I wouldn’t. If you can’t set me right, Thorpe, no one in Boston can. Look here; brought your tools?”
The young doctor smiled.
“Ah, it’s nothing to grin about.”
“No; it is serious enough, my dear sir.”
“Then answer my question. Brought your tools?”
“I have come quite prepared.”
“Then I shan’t have it done.”
Michael Thorpe looked at his patient as if he did not believe him, and the latter continued—
“I say: it’s confoundedly hard that I should suffer like this. Spent all my life slaving, and now at sixty, when I want a little peace and enjoyment, this cursed trouble comes on. Look here, Thorpe; don’t fool about with me. Charge me what you like, but tell me; couldn’t you give me some stuff that would cure it without this operation?”
“Do you want me to be perfectly plain with you, sir, once more?”
“Of course. Do I look the sort of man to be humbugged?”
“Then I must tell you, sir, the simple truth. You may go on for months, perhaps a year, as you are. That is the outside.”
“I wouldn’t go on for a week as I have been, my lad.—But if I have it done?”
“There is no reason why you should not live to be eighty, or a hundred, if you can.”
“Right; I’ll go in for the hundred, Thorpe. I’m tough enough. There, get it over.”
“You will have it do