By this time little Dr. Toole had stepped into the club, after his wont, as he passed the Phoenix.  Sturk was playing draughts with old Arthur Slowe, and Dangerfield, erect and grim, was looking on the game, over his shoulder.  Toole and Sturk were more distant and cold in their intercourse of late, though this formality partook of their respective characters.  Toole used to throw up his nose, and raise his eyebrows, and make his brother mediciner a particularly stiff, and withal scornful reverence when they met.  Sturk, on the other hand, made a short, surly nod—­’twas little more—­and, without a word, turned on his heel, with a gruff pitch of his shoulder towards Toole.

The fact was, these two gentlemen had been very near exchanging pistol shots, or sword thrusts, only a week or two before; and all about the unconscious gentleman who was smiling in his usual pleasant fashion over the back of Sturk’s chair.  So Dangerfield’s little dyspepsy had like to have cured one or other of the village leeches, for ever and a day, of the heart-ache and all other aches that flesh is heir to.  For Dangerfield commenced with Toole:  and that physician, on the third day of his instalment, found that Sturk had stept in and taken his patient bodily out of his hands.

’I’ve seen one monkey force open the jaws of his brother, resolutely introduce his fingers, pluck from the sanctuary of his cheek the filbert he had just stowed there for his private nutrition and delight, and crunch and eat it with a stern ecstasy of selfishness, himself; and I fancy that the feelings of the quadrumanous victim, his jaws aching, his pouch outraged, and his bon-bouche in the miscreant’s mouth, a little resembles those of the physician who has suffered so hideous a mortification as that of Toole.

Toole quite forgave Dangerfield.  That gentleman gave him to understand that his ministrations were much more to his mind than those of his rival.  But—­and this was conveyed in strict confidence—­this change was put upon him by a—­a—­in fact a nobleman—­Lord Castlemallard—­with whom, just now, Dr. Sturk can do a great deal; ’and you know I can’t quarrel with my lord.  It has pained me, I assure you, very much; and to say truth, whoever applied to him to interfere in the matter, was, in my mind, guilty of an impertinence, though, as you see, I can’t resent it.’

’Whoever applied? ‘tis pretty plain,’ repeated Toole, with a vicious sneer.  ’The whispering, undermining—­and as stupid as the Hill of Howth.  I wish you safe out of his hands, Sir.’

And positively, only for Aunt Becky, who was always spoiling this sort of sport, and who restrained the gallant Toole by a peremptory injunction, there would have been, in Nutter’s unfortunate phrase, ’wigs on the green,’ next day.