* * * * *

‘His heart is beating faintly.’

Old Dr. Hawley dropped the antique stethoscope back into the pocket of his tight dress coat, and, still bending over Uncle Meshach, but turning slightly towards John and Leonora, smiled with all his invincible jollity.

‘Is it, by Jove?’ John exclaimed.

‘You thought he was dead?’ said the doctor, beaming.

Leonora nodded.

‘Well, he isn’t,’ the doctor announced with curt cheerfulness.

‘That’s good,’ said John.

‘But I don’t think he can get over it,’ the doctor concluded, with undiminished brightness, his eyes twinkling.

While he spoke he was busy with the hot water and the cloths which Leonora and Rose had produced immediately upon demand.  In a few minutes Uncle Meshach was covered almost from head to foot with cloths drenched in hot mustard-and-water; he had hot-water bags under his arms, and he was swathed in a huge blanket.

‘There!’ said the rotund doctor.  ’You must keep that up, and I’ll send a stimulant at once.  I can’t stop now; not another minute.  I was called to an obstetric case just as I started out.  I’ll come back the moment I’m free.’

‘What is it—­this thing?’ John inquired.

‘What is it!’ the doctor repeated genially.  ’I’ll tell you what it is.  Put your nose there.’  He indicated Uncle Meshach’s mouth.  ’Do you notice that ammoniacal smell?  That’s due to uraemia, a sequel of Bright’s disease.’

‘Bright’s disease?’ John muttered.

‘Bright’s disease,’ affirmed the doctor, dwelling on the famous and striking syllables.  ’Your uncle is the typical instance of the man who has never been ill in his life.  He walks up a little slope or up some steps to a friend’s house, and just as he is lifting his hand to the knocker, he has a convulsion and falls down unconscious.  That’s Bright’s disease.  Never been ill in his life!  Not so far as he knew!  Not so far as he knew!  Nearly all you Myatts had weak kidneys.  Do you remember your great-uncle Ebenezer?  You’ve sent down to Miss Myatt, you say?  Good....  Perhaps he was lying on your steps for two or three hours.  He may pull round.  He may.  We must hope so.’

The doctor put on his overcoat, and his cap with the ear-flaps, and after a final glance at the patient and a friendly, reassuring smile at Leonora, he went slowly to the door.  Girth and good humour and funny stories had something to do with his great reputation in Bursley and Hillport.  But he possessed shrewdness and sagacity; he belonged to a dynasty of doctors; and he was deeply versed in the social traditions of the district.  Men consulted him because their grandfathers had consulted his father, and because there had always been a Dr. Hawley in Bursley, and because he was acquainted with the pathological details of their ancestral history on both sides of the hearth.  His patients, indeed, were not individuals, but families.  There were cleverer doctors in the place, doctors of more refined appearance and manners, doctors less monotonously and loudly gay; but old Hawley, with his knowledge of pedigrees and his unique instinctive sympathy with the idiosyncrasies of local character, could hold his own against the most assertive young M.D. that ever came out of Edinburgh to monopolise the Five Towns.