Mr. Pillanbill graciously consented. Dr. Twiggit resided ten miles off, and had too good a practice near home to make it worth his while to poach upon his (P.’s) manor for the sake of a single outlying patient with a limited purse. So Dr. Twiggit was summoned, and came; he was a little man, with a large hooked nose and an ornithological cast of countenance, as of a shrewd fowl. Having strutted and clapped his wings, and, so to speak, crowed over the apothecary and the Rosebud, and looked as if he would have liked uncommonly to fight Ernest for a handful of barley, he entered the sick-room, where first, with two little bright bead-like eyes, he looked clean through poor Mrs. Colville into the mattress and feather-bed; next, he stretched out a claw to feel her pulse; then he pecked at her to make her put out her tongue; then he shook his feathers and crowed over _her_; and then he chased Pillanbill round and out of the room for the consultation, which ran thus:-- _Twiggit_.--“Clear case!” _Pillanbill_.--“No mistake.” _Twiggit_.--“Hepatico-cerebreosistosis, first stage.” _Pillanbill._--“Quite so.” _Twiggit_.--“What have you thrown in?” _Pillanbill_ hands prescription. _Hydrarg_:--mysterious cipher, looking like a 3 with two heads--_Rhei: pulvo_:--another cipher, worse than the first, &c., &c. _Twiggit_ reads--“Hum! yes, ha! good!” (returns prescription), “can’t be better--ar--I think that is all to-day, ar--needn’t send for me unless any symptoms of spiflicatio appear, and then it will be too late; keep the feet warm, head cool, nourishing slops, bland puddings--but you know--good morning.” So saying, the talented M.D., who was in himself a modern instance of the mythical relation existing between Esculapius and the cock, strutted out to his carriage a richer man by five-guineas than he had been when he quitted that vehicle.