THE TWO DOCTORS CHANGE PATIENTS

Dr Fillgrave still continued his visits to Greshamsbury, for Lady Arabella had not yet mustered the courage necessary for swallowing her pride and sending once more for Dr Thorne.  Nothing pleased Dr Fillgrave more than those visits.

He habitually attended grander families, and richer people; but then, he had attended them habitually.  Greshamsbury was a prize taken from the enemy; it was his rock of Gibraltar, of which he thought much more than of any ordinary Hampshire or Wiltshire which had always been within his own kingdom.

He was just starting one morning with his post-horses for Greshamsbury, when an impudent-looking groom, with a crooked nose, trotted up to his door.  For Joe still had a crooked nose, all the doctor’s care having been inefficacious to remedy the evil effects of Bridget’s little tap with the rolling-pin.  Joe had no written credentials, for his master was hardly equal to writing, and Lady Scatcherd had declined to put herself to further personal communication with Dr Fillgrave; but he had effrontery enough to deliver any message.

‘Be you Dr Fillgrave?’ said Joe, with one finger just raised to his cocked hat.

‘Yes,’ said Dr Fillgrave, with one foot on the step of the carriage, but pausing at the sight of the well-turned-out servant.  ’Yes; I am Dr Fillgrave.’

‘Then you be to go to Boxall Hill immediately; before anywhere else.’

‘Boxall Hill!’ said the doctor, with a very angry frown.

’Yes; Boxall Hill:  my master’s place—­my master is Sir Louis Scatcherd, baronet.  You’ve heard of him, I suppose?’

Dr Fillgrave had not his mind quite ready for such an occasion.  So he withdrew his foot from the carriage step, and rubbing his hands one over another, looked at his own hall door for inspiration.  A single glance at his face was sufficient to show that no ordinary thoughts were being turned over within his breast.

‘Well!’ said Joe, thinking that his master’s name had not altogether produced the magic effect which he had expected; remembering, also, how submissive Greyson had always been, who, being a London doctor, must be supposed to be a bigger man than this provincial fellow.  ’Do you know my master is dying, very like, while you stand here?’

‘What is your master’s disease?’ said the doctor, facing Joe, slowly, and still rubbing his hands.  ’What ails him?  What is the matter with him?’

’Oh; the matter with him?  Well, to say it out at once then, he do take a drop too much at times, and then he has the horrors—­what is it they call it?  Delicious beam-ends, or something of that sort.’

‘Ah, ah, yes; I know; and tell me, my man, who is attending him?’

‘Attending him? why, I do, and his mother, that is, her ladyship.’

‘Yes; but what medical attendant:  what doctor?’

‘Why, there was Greyson, in London, and—­’