“And what is that?”

“Liquorice and water, to be sure; there’s nothing else I can take.  I’ve tasted everything in the shop, from plate powder to aqua fortis, and everything goes against my stomach.”

“Well, Tom, it’s a hard case; but perhaps the doctor will think better of it”

“He’d better, or I’ll set up for myself, for I won’t stand it any longer; it ain’t only for myself but for others that I care.  Why, I’ve a hankering for Anny Whistle (you know her, don’t you?), a pretty little girl with red lips—­lives in Church Street.  Well, as long as I could bring her a bit of liquorice when I went to see her all was smooth enough, and I got many a kiss when no one was nigh; but now that I can’t fork out a bit as big as a marble, she’s getting quite shy of me, and is always walking with Bill, the butcher’s boy.  I know he gives her bull’s eyes—­I seed him one day buying a ha’p’orth.  Now, ain’t that hard?”

“Why, certainly, the affair becomes serious; but, still, how you are to set up for yourself I don’t know.  You are not qualified.”

“Oh! ain’t I?  Just as much as most doctors are.  There must be a beginning, and if I gives wrong medicine at first, then I’ll try another, and so on, until I come to what will cure them.  Soon learn, Tom.”

“Well, but how will you do about surgery?”

“Surgery?  Oh, I’ll do very well; don’t know much about it just now—­soon learn.”

“Why, would you venture to take off a man’s leg, Tom?  Do you know how to take up the arteries?”

“Would I take off a man’s leg?  To be sure I would, as quick as the doctor could.  As for the arteries, why, I might puzzle a little about them; but by the time I had taken off three or four legs I should know something about them.  Practice makes perfect—­soon learn, Tom.”

“But all your first patients would die.”

“I don’t know that.  At all events I should do my best, and no man can do more, and if they did die, why, it would be by the visitation of God, wouldn’t it?”

“Not altogether, I’m afraid.  It won’t do, Tom.”

“It has done from the beginning of the world, and will do.  I say there’s no learning without practice.  People spoil at first in every trade, and make afterward, and a man ain’t born a doctor any more than he is a carpenter.”

“No, but if I recollect right, to be a surgeon you ought to walk the hospital, as they term it.”

“Well, and haven’t I for these last four years?  When I carries out my basket of physic I walks the hospital right through, twice at least every day in the week.”

“That’s Greenwich Hospital.”

“Well, so it is, and plenty of surgical cases in it.  However, the doctor and I must come to a proper understanding.  I didn’t clean his boots this morning.  I wish, if you see him, Tom, you’d reason with him a little.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but don’t be rash.  Good-by, Tom; mind you tell the doctor that I called.”