’Something!  I don’t know what you call something.  I never was better in my life.  Ask Winterbones here.’

’Indeed, now, Scatcherd, you ain’t; you’re bad enough if you only knew it.  And as for Winterbones, he has no business here up in your bedroom, which stinks of gin so, it does.  Don’t you believe him, doctor; he ain’t well, nor yet nigh well.’

Winterbones, when the above ill-natured allusion was made to the aroma coming from his libations, might be seen to deposit surreptitiously beneath the little table at which he sat, the cup with which he had performed them.

The doctor, in the meantime, had taken Sir Roger’s hand on the pretext of feeling his pulse, but was drawing quite as much information from the touch of the sick man’s skin, and the look of the sick man’s eye.

‘I think Mr Winterbones had better go back to the London office,’ said he.  ‘Lady Scatcherd will be your best clerk for some time, Sir Roger.’

‘Then I’ll be d——­ if Mr Winterbones does anything of the kind,’ said he; ‘so there’s an end of that.’

‘Very well,’ said the doctor.  ’A man can die but once.  It is my duty to suggest measures for putting off the ceremony as long as possible.  Perhaps, however, you may wish to hasten it.’

‘Well, I am not anxious about it, one way or the other,’ said Scatcherd.  And as he spoke there came a fierce gleam from his eye, which seemed to say—­’If that’s the bugbear with which you wish to frighten me, you will be mistaken.’

‘Now, doctor, don’t let him talk that way, don’t,’ said Lady Scatcherd, with her handkerchief to her eyes.

‘Now, my lady, do you cut it; cut at once,’ said Sir Roger, turning hastily round to his better-half; and his better-half, knowing that the province of a woman is to obey, did cut it.  But as she went she gave the doctor a pull by the coat’s sleeve, so that thereby his healing faculties might be sharpened to the very utmost.

‘The best woman in the world, doctor; the very best,’ said he, as the door closed behind the wife of his bosom.

‘I’m sure of it,’ said the doctor.

‘Yes, till you find a better one,’ said Scatcherd.  ’Ha! ha! ha! but for good or bad, there are some things which a woman can’t understand, and some things which she ought not to be let to understand.’

‘It’s natural she should be anxious about your health, you know.’

‘I don’t know that,’ said the contractor.  ’She’ll be very well off.  All that whining won’t keep a man alive, at any rate.’

There was a pause, during which the doctor continued his medical examination.  To this the patient submitted with a bad grace; but still he did submit.

‘We must turn over a new leaf, Sir Roger; indeed we must.’

‘Bother,’ said Sir Roger.

’Well, Scatcherd; I must do my duty to you, whether you like it or not.’

‘That is to say, I am to pay you for trying to frighten me.’