“Come out of that, you fellows,” he cries, “and don’t be gibbering idiots!”

But for all that he is palpably nervous and uneasy.

“Go away and lie down, like a good fellow,” I say soothingly; “it’ll be all right—­all right.”

But Mac is not soothed in the least.  Then we whisper some more, and rustle the leaves of a large Quain which lies on the mantelpiece, a legacy from some former medical lodger.  After a respectable time we come out without looking at Mac, who peers at us steadily from the sofa.  I go directly to the Scotsman of the day, and run my finger down the serried columns till I come to the paragraph which gives the mortality for the week.  Almond looks over my shoulder the while, and I make a score with my finger-nail under the words “enteric fever.”  We are sure that Mac does not know what enteric fever is.  No more do we, but that does not matter.

We withdraw solemnly one by one, as if we were a procession, with a muttered excuse to Mac that we are going out to see a man.  Almond sympathetically and silently brings a dressing-gown to cover his feet.  He angrily kicks it across the floor.

“I say, you fellows—­” he begins, as we go out.

But we take no heed.  The case is too serious.  Then we go into the kitchen and discuss it with the landlady.

We do this with solemn pauses, indicative of deep thought.  We go back into the sitting-room.  Mac has been to look at the paper where my nail scored it.  We knew he would, and he is now lying on the sofa rather pale.  He even groans a little.  The symptoms work handsomely.  It is small wonder we are alarmed.

We ring for the landlady, and she comes in hastily and with anxiety depicted on her countenance.  She asks him where he feels it worst.  Teena runs for Quain, and, being the least suspect of the party, she reads, in a low, hushed tone, an account of the symptoms of enteric fever (previously inserted in manuscript) which would considerably astonish Dr. Quain and the able specialist who contributed the real account of that disease to the volume.

It seems that for the disease specified, castor-oil and a mustard blister, the latter applied very warm between the shoulders, are the appropriate and certain cures.  There is nothing that Mac dislikes so much as castor-oil.  He would rather die than take it—­so he says.  But a valuable life, which might be spent in the service of the highest art, must not be permitted to be thus thrown away.  So we get the castor-oil in a spoon, and with Teena coaxing and Almond acting on the well-known principle of twenty years’ resolute government—­down she goes.