"It's just your husband. Isn't his name Sawmill?""Dear no! Have you forgotten?--David.""Ou, ay. I knew it was some Scripcher Petrarch or another, Daavid, or Naathan, or Sawmill. And how is he, and where is he?"Mrs. Dodd replied that he was on the seas, but expect----"Then I wish him well off 'em, confound 'em oncannall! Halloa! why, this will be the little girl grown up int' a wumman while ye look round.""Yes, may good friend; and her mother's darling.""And she's a bonny lass, I can tell ye. But no freend to the Dockers, Isee.""Ah!" said Mrs. Dodd sadly, "looks are deceitful; she is under medical advice at this very----""Well, that won't hurt her, unless she takes it." And he burst into a ringing laugh: but in the middle of it, stopped dead short, and his face elongated. "Lord sake, mad'm," said he impressively," mind what y' are at, though; Barkton's just a trap for fanciful femuls: there's a n'oily ass called Osmond, and a canting cut-throat called Stephenson and a genteel, cadaveris old assassin called Short, as long as a maypole;they'd soon take the rose out of Miss Floree's cheek here. Why, they'd starve Cupid, an' veneseck Venus, an' blister Pomonee, the vagabins."Mrs. Dodd looked a little confused, and exchanged speaking glances with Julia. " However," she said calmly, "I _have_ consulted Mr. Osmond and Dr. Short; but have not relied on them alone. I have taken her to Sir William Best. And to Dr. Chalmers. And to Dr. Kenyon." And she felt invulnerable behind her phalanx of learning and reputation.
"Good Hivens!" roared the visitor, "what a gauntlet o' gabies for one girl to run; and come out alive! And the picter of health. My faith, Miss Floree, y' are tougher than ye look.""My daughter's name is Julia," observed Mrs. Dodd, a little haughtily;but instantly recovering herself, she said, "This is Dr. Sampson, love--an old friend of your mother's.""And th' Author an' Invintor of th' great Chronothairmal Therey o'
Midicine, th' Unity Perriodicity an' Remittency of all disease," put in the visitor, with such prodigious swiftness of elocution that the words went tumbling over one another like railway carriages out on pleasure, and the sentence was a pile of loud, indistinct syllables.
Julia's lovely eyes dilated at this clishmaclaver, and she bowed coldly.
Dr. Sampson had revealed in this short interview nearly all the characteristics of voice, speech, and manner, she had been taught from infancy to shun: boisterous, gesticulatory, idiomatic; and had taken the discourse out of her mamma's mouth twice. Now Albion Villa was a Red Indian hut in one respect: here nobody interrupted.
Mrs. Dodd had little personal egotism, but she had a mother's, and could not spare this opportunity of adding another Doctor to her collection: so she said hurriedly, "Will you permit me to show you what your learned confreres have prescribed her?" Julia sighed aloud, and deprecated the subject with earnest furtive signs; Mrs. Dodd would not see them. Now, Dr. Sampson was himself afflicted with what I shall venture to call a mental ailment; to wit, a furious intolerance of other men's opinions; he had not even patience to hear them. "Mai--dear--mad'm," said he hastily, "when you've told me their names, that's enough. Short treats her for liver, Sir William goes in for lung disease or heart, Chalmers sis it's the nairves, and Kinyon the mookis membrin; and _I_ say they are fools and lyres all four.""Julia!" ejaculated Mrs. Dodd, "this is very extraordinary.""No, it is not extraordinary," cried Dr. Sampson defiantly; "nothing is extraordinary. D'ye think I've known these shallow men thirty years, and not plumbed 'um?""Shallow, my good friend? Excuse me! they are the ablest men in your own branch of your own learned profession.""Th' ablest! Oh, you mean the money-makingest: now listen me! our lairned Profession is a rascally one. It is like a barrel of beer. What rises to the top?" Here he paused for a moment, then answered himself furiously, "THE SCUM."This blast blown, he moderated a little. "Look see!" said he, "up to three or four thousand a year, a Docker is often an honest man, and sometimes knows something of midicine; not much, because it is not taught anywhere. But if he is making over five thousand, he must be a rogue or else a fool: either he has booed an' booed, an' cript an' crawled, int'
wholesale collusion with th' apothecary an' the accoucheur--the two jockeys that drive John Bull's faemily coach--and they are sucking the pashint togither, like a leash o' leeches: or else he has turned spicialist; has tacked his name to some poplar disorder, real or imaginary; it needn't exist to be poplar. Now, those four you have been to are spicialists, and that means monomaniues--their buddies exspatiate in West-ind squares, but their souls dwell in a n'alley, ivery man jack of 'em: Aberford's in Stomich Alley, Chalmers's in Nairve Court, Short's niver stirs out o' Liver Lane, Paul's is stuck fast in Kidney Close, Kinyon's in Mookis Membrin Mews, and Hibbard's in Lung Passage. Look see!
nixt time y' are out of sorts, stid o' consultin' three bats an' a n'owl at a guinea the piece, send direct to me, and I'll give y' all their opinions, and all their prescriptions, _gratis._ And deevilich dear ye'll find 'em at the price, if ye swallow 'm."Mrs. Dodd thanked him coldly for the offer, but said she would be more grateful if he would show his superiority to persons of known ability by just curing her daughter on the spot.
"Well, I will," said he carelessly: and all his fire died out of him.
"Put out your tongue!--Now your pulse!"
Mrs. Dodd knew her man (ladies are very apt to fathom their male acquaintance--too apt, _I_ think); and, to pin him to the only medical theme which interested her, seized the opportunity while he was in actual contact with Julia's wrist, and rapidly enumerated her symptoms, and also told him what Mr. Osmond had said about Hyperaesthesia.