‘All right, Heckett; have it your own way. How’s the head?’ ‘Orful; can’t sleep with it.’ ‘Let’s look at it again.’ With a hand as gentle as a woman’s, Birnie removed the bandages, and examined the wounded man. After carefully looking at a rapidly healing wound, he put back the strappings and the linen, and felt the patient’s pulse. ‘All right, Heckett, you’re going on well. You’ll be able to get out in a week. By Jove! I thought it was all up with you that night you sent for me in a hurry. I didn’t expect you’d live till the morning.’ ‘But I did, ye see; and I mean to live a good bit longer yet. Josh Heckett isn’t going to snuff: it just for a crack on the head.’ ‘No, you weren’t born to die that way, Josh.’ The invalid glanced up at the doctor’s face with a look of such intense rage that it convulsed his swollen features, and made him cry out with pain. ‘Mind what you say, governor,’ he hissed, clinching his fist under the counterpane. ‘If I come to a bad end there’s others as ‘ll have to be in the same boat with me.’ The doctor laughed, and turned the conversation. ‘How does Gertie manage?’ ‘Oh, all right. She’s a kind wench; I don’t know what I should do without her. She’s a fust-class nuss, and she attends the animiles, and she can talk to the customers better nor I can.’ ‘Well, then, why do you swear at her?’ The man looked at him a moment as if he had not heard aright. ‘Swear at her! Why, you’ll ask me why I looks at her next. There ain’t nothin’ in swearing at anybody, is there? ‘Tain’t hitting of ‘em, is it?’ Mr. Josh Heckett was lost in amazement. The doctor objected to his swearing at Gertie. Why, he swore at everything—at the dogs, at the guinea-pigs, at the chairs and tables, at himself—why should he make an exception of Gertie? ‘Well, I’m blowed!’ he added, when he had fully realized the enormity of the objection. ‘This here’s a free country, and a cove ain’t to swear at his own gal. Oh, crikey! ‘Well, don’t do it, Josh; that’s all I ask you. The girl’s a good little lass, and she doesn’t like it.’ Josh Heckett pulled himself up in bed. ‘Look here, Oliver Birnie, Hessquire, Hemd., you get my head well, that’s your business. Me and my gal’s got on pretty well without your assistance up to now, and we’re wery much obliged, but “declined with thanks,” as they sez in the noose-papers. Oliver Birnie, Hessquire, Hemd., drop it.’ ‘You’re facetious to-day, Josh. Never mind; you’re always glad enough to send for me when you’re in a mess.’ ‘Yes, and you was very glad of my services once.’ The doctor’s brow darkened as he muttered: ‘That was a bad time for a good many of us—a time we should like to forget.’ ‘I dessay,’ growled Heckett; ‘and as you’d like other people to forget too. You’ve got on in the world, and rolls your eyes hup, and does the wirtuous now. I can’t afford to.’