“What do you mean?”

“When the cholera comes here as it will, at its present pace, before the end of the summer, then I shall have the zoophytes rising up in judgment against me, if I have not profited by a leaf out of their book.”

“The cholera?” said Elsley in a startled voice, forgetting Tom’s parables in the new thought.  For Elsley had a dread more nervous than really coward of infectious diseases; and he had also (and prided himself, too, on having) all Goethe’s dislike of anything terrible or horrible, of sickness, disease, wounds, death, anything which jarred with that “beautiful” which was his idol.

“The cholera?” repeated he.  “I hope not; I wish you had not mentioned it, Mr. Thurnall.”

“I am very sorry that I did so, if it offends you.  I had thought that forewarned was forearmed.  After all it is no business of mine; if I have extra labour, as I shall have, I shall have extra experience; and that will be a fair set-off, even if the board of guardians don’t vote me an extra remuneration, as they ought to do.”

Elsley was struck dumb; first by the certainty which Tom’s words expressed, and next by the coolness of their temper.  At last he stammered out, “Good heavens, Mr. Thurnall! you do not talk of that frightful scourge—­so disgusting, too, in its character—­as a matter of profit and loss?  It is sordid, cold-hearted!”

“My dear sir, if I let myself think, much more talk, about the matter in any other tone, I should face the thing poorly enough when it came.  I shall have work enough to keep my head about the end of August or beginning of September, and I must not lose it beforehand, by indulging in any horror, disgust, or other emotion perfectly justifiable in a layman.”

“But are not doctors men?”

“That depends very much on what ‘a man’ means.”

“Men with human sympathy and compassion.”

“Oh, I mean by a man, a man with human strength.  My dear sir, one may be too busy, and at doing good too (though that is not my line, save professionally, because it is my only way of earning money); but one may be too busy at doing good to have time for compassion.  If while I was cutting a man’s leg off I thought of the pain which he was suffering—­”

“Thank heaven!” said Elsley, “that it was not my lot to become a medical man.”

Tom looked at him with the quaintest smile:  a flush of mingled anger and contempt had been rising in him as he heard the ex-bottle-boy talking sentiment:  but he only went on quietly,

“No, sir; with your more delicate sensibilities, you may thank Heaven that you did not become a medical man; your life would have been one of torture, disgust, and agonising sense of responsibility.  But do you not see that you must thank Heaven for the sufferer’s sake also?  I will not shock you again by talking of amputation; but even in the smallest matter—­even if you were merely sending medicine to an old maid—­suppose