DOCTOR: How is your appetite? MRS. R.: It isn’t the quantity I was thinkin’ of, Doctor, so much as the class of food as we go in for. We both of us got a taste for ’am an’ bloaters, and so forth. DOCTOR: Do you enjoy your food? MRS. R.: But if me ’air is fallin’ out on that account—— DOCTOR: Are you a hearty eater? MRS. R.: Of course, Doctor, I on’y want to know what’s right. DOCTOR: You say that your appetite is good? MRS. R.: I was sayin’ about us bein’ partial to ’am and so forth, Doctor. If you think I oughter stop it, I kin easy do so. I on’y wanter do what’s right. What’s your opinion about me, Doctor? You can see I’m very ill. DOCTOR: I’m giving you some medicine, Mrs. Rafferty—you’ve brought your bottle, I see—it’s a strong tonic, and there are three pills with it, which—— MRS. R.: I forgot to arst you, Doctor. Do you think a drop of stout—as much as you kin get into a egg-cup—would ’urt a little boy of five years old what’s got a poverty of ’is blood? There’s a neighbour o’ mine—a very nice woman—wh—— DOCTOR: About these pills, Mrs. Rafferty: I want you to take one when you get in, one before you go to bed, and one—— MRS. R.: Can I take a little slice of ’am, Doctor, or must I live on slops and that? DOCTOR: You can eat exactly what you please. This medicine will put you right. It is a very strong, dark red tonic. Do you understand about the pills, now? MRS. R.: She’s a nice woman, and it’s sad to see her strugglin’ along by ’erself wiv that boy to keep. And so I told ’er—— DOCTOR: Send her round to see me. You’ll get your medicine from the dispenser. MRS. R.: About me wrists, Doctor: I find that one is thicker than—— DOCTOR: Come and see me again when you’ve finished that medicine. Pay outside. MRS. R.: And, Doctor, is there anything more besides the physic? I thought perhaps you would give me a pill. DOCTOR: I am giving you three pills. One of them I want you to take when you get in, another at night, and—— MRS. R.: About the money, Doctor: I s’pose as it’ll do if I pay next week? *XII* *THE TUSKERS* It has not been the fortune of the present historian to enjoy a personal experience of the state of matrimony. But he has never been lacking in awe for the wonders attaching to that institution. It has always seemed to him, looking upward, as it were, from the mire of bachelordom, that the married mind is subject to rare emotions, productive of a singular philosophy which one must view with astonishment, if not with envy. In illustration of my meaning, permit me to cite the case of the Tuskers. The Tuskers, as we were definitely informed by Mr. Tusker, have been tasting the wedded blisses for nearly eighteen years. And Mr. Tusker called in recently at Doctor Brink’s in the matter, as he expressed it, of "any old bottles, any old rags; old bones, rabbit-skins, waste paper to buy," which somehow looks wrong. Let us try again—