Carter clutched at the Krooboy's brawny hand and wrung it enthusiastically. "Hullo, Pater! Fancy seeing you out here in this filthy hole! Well, sir, it is real good of you to leave Wharfedale and come all this way to look me up. How's the Mater? All right, eh? And did she do you in the eye this year over the roses, or did you manage to snip off the buds ahead of her? You didn't happen to bring any beer with you, did you, sir? Nice cool draught of Pateley ale, in your big silver tankard that you won for stewing Hindoo babies alive at the burning ghats? We've got muggers here, too.... Lord, what rot I'm talking, and you aren't the Pater at all, but only a dashed good sort of an ugly nigger with a blue frying pan tattooed across the bridge of your nose. White-Man's-Trouble, tell me solemnly and truly. Why do noses have bridges? Why, for instance, not ferries? Wake up, you image, and give me a civil answer." "You lib for dam bad fever," said White-Man's-Trouble still more thoughtfully, "an' if you lib for die, Okky men catch me one-time. So I fit for make you well one-time. Oh, Carter, you hear, I plenty-much fine doctor." "You a doctor! With peacock's feathers growing out behind your ears instead of whiskers!" "I savvy nothing white-man's drug-palaver. But I savvy plenty cure fever Krooboy fashion." "Do you? Which of you? What rot I'm talking! But upon my Sam, the Pater's gone, and there are three distinct White-Man's-Troubles standing there all in a row. I'll just talk to the middle one, and you others shut up. Now, then, sir, you say you savvy Krooboy doctor-palaver?" "Savvy plenty." "Then, doc, I offer myself as a patient. Never mind sending in to Grasington for your amputating tools. Remember you are a Dales doctor, and as you've pointed out with offensive cheerfulness many times, you saw me into this hot and wicked world, and I know you jolly well hope to see me out. You catch the patient and we do the rest, as the undertakers say when they send round their cards about top hats and gun cases. Special quotations for fever patients F.O.B., for then a couple of firebars out of the engine room does the trick, and saves the cost of an elaborate coffin." "Oh, Carter, listen to me." "Well?" "I lib for Krooboy quarters for fetich ju-ju. You sit here. No run away. Savvy?" "Be long gone?" "I come back one-time." "All right. Give my compliments to Miss Slade, and say we had a jolly walk in the moonlight and found everything all right when we got here, except that Mr. Swizzle-Stick--whose other name I forget--had eloped with the assistant typewriter. Say, it was rather a nuisance about the typewriter woman, because she was the one who made the jellies, jolly cool yellow jellies with just a drop of sherry in them that were perfectly ripping when you had been sick. My mother used to make jellies like that herself for us kids when we were sick----"