“What is the duodenum?” Mr. Prohack wanted to cry out.  But he was too ashamed to ask.  It was hardly conceivable that he, so wise, so prudent, had allowed over forty years to pass in total ignorance of this important item of his own body.  He felt himself to be a bag full of disconcerting and dangerous mysteries.  Or he might have expressed it that he had been smoking in criminal nonchalance for nearly half a century on the top of a powder magazine.  He was deeply impressed by the rapidity and assurance of the doctor’s diagnosis.  It was wonderful that the queer fellow could in a few minutes single out an obscure organ no bigger than a pencil and say:  “There is the ill.”  The fellow might be a quack, but sometimes quacks were men of genius.  His shame and his alarm quickly vanished under the doctor’s reassuring and bland manner.  So much so that when Dr. Veiga had written out a prescription, Mr. Prohack said lightly: 

“I suppose I can get up, though.”

To which Dr. Veiga amiably replied: 

“I shall leave that to you.  Perhaps if I tell you you’ll be lucky if you don’t have jaundice...!  But I think you will be lucky.  I’ll try to look in again this afternoon.”

These last words staggered both Mr. and Mrs. Prohack.

“I’ve been expecting this for years.  I knew it would come.”  Mrs. Prohack breathed tragically.

And even Mr. Prohack reflected aghast: 

“My God!  Doctor calling twice a day!”

True, “duodenum” was a terrible word.

Mrs. Prohack gazed at Dr. Veiga as at a high priest, and waited to be vouchsafed a further message.

“Anyhow, if I find it impossible to call, I’ll telephone in any case,” said Dr. Veiga.

Some slight solace in this!

Mrs. Prohack, like an acolyte, personally attended the high priest as far as the street, listening with acute attention to his recommendations.  When she returned she had put on a carefully bright face.  Evidently she had decided, or had been told, that cheerfulness was essential to ward off jaundice.

“Now that’s what I call a doctor,” said she.  “To think of your friend Plott...!  I’ve telephoned for a messenger boy to go to the chemist’s.”

“You’re at liberty to call the man a doctor,” answered Mr. Prohack.  “And I’m at liberty to call him a fine character actor.”

“I knew the moment you sat up it was jaundice,” said Mrs. Prohack.

“Well,” said Mr. Prohack.  “I lay you five to one I don’t have jaundice.  Not that you’d ever pay me if you lost.”

Mrs. Prohack said: 

“When I saw you were asleep at after eight o’clock this morning I knew there must be something serious.  I felt it.  However, as the doctor says, if we take it seriously it will soon cease to be serious.”

“He’s not a bad phrase-maker,” said Mr. Prohack.