"Do you call yeself a man?" demanded the visitor, with heightened colour. "What the scarlet letter do ye reckon I engaged ye for? Think I wanted ye for the sake of yere filthy physic? Ain’t ye got no ’eart? Make out the invoice like a fair-minded man. Never tell me as you’d ’ave the ’eart to rob a pore man of ’is money.... They’ve refused to give me compensation fur my accident, and now ’ere’s you—a genelman born, as oughta be above sich actions—you’re gointer rob a pore man of ’is doctor’s bill.... Besides, I _tole_ ’em that I owed a sovereign to the doctor, and they tells me to produce the invoice.... What am I to tell my firm?" "Tell them what you like," replied the doctor. "I certainly shall give you no receipt for money which I haven’t had." "Then ’ow do I go on?" queried the visitor. The doctor shrugged his shoulders. ’"Ow’m I goin’ on fur compensation—fur my accident?" The doctor repeated his shrug. "It seems to me," he said, "that your firm has treated you well. You don’t know much, you know." "I may be a fool," admitted the afflicted one, "but I know my rights. I oughter be paid some compensation fur me accident.... You won’t do nothing to ’elp me, then?" "I can’t," replied the doctor. "What you want is a new head." "Do I?" retorted the caller, flourishing his wounded arm. "That’s the very thing as _you’ll_ be needin’, ole sport, if ever I meets you outside. Call yeself a man? _I_ call you a swindlin’ ’pothecary. I tell you one thing, Mister Whatsitname. Whenever I ’as another haccident, I takes it to the bloomin’ ’orspital. I do know _that_ much. See?" *XXXIII* *THE MOTHERS’ MEETING* The morning callers at Dr. Brink’s dispensary are all of them women or little children. You may suppose that the waiting-room wears then a strange and wistful air, for the men being absent, with their hoarse, funereal pleasantries, and the shuffling young boys being absent too, and the girls likewise, having carried their titters and squeaks to the factory, there is not much to amuse folk in the waiting-room. You cannot expect a married woman to be very cheerful at the best of times, and when there is the place to tidy and the rent man expected, and the children will soon be coming home for their slabs and what not, and you have slipped out just for half a tick to get that dizzy feeling seen to, it is more than usually dull to be sat in a row with twenty other females, similarly cursed—some of them having babies at their breasts or little squalling things what hold fast to their skirts, and the place that stuffy and all, and a stink of iodine coming out of the doctor’s room. Taking one consideration with another, it is not to be wondered at that the morning patients do not wear that air of curiosity and pleasure which a visit to the doctor should properly occasion.