I was to lie senseless in the roadway,
and to be carried into him by a sympathising crowd,
while the footman ran with a paragraph to the newspapers.
But there was the likelihood that the crowd might carry
me in to the rival practitioner opposite. In various
disguises I was to feign fits at his very door, and so
furnish fresh copy for the local press. Then I was to
die--absolutely to expire--and all Scotland was to
resound with how Dr. Cullingworth, of Avonmouth, had
resuscitated me. His ingenious brain rang a thousand
changes out of the idea, and his own impending bankruptcy
was crowded right out of his thoughts by the flood of
half-serious devices.
But the thing that took the fun out of him, and made
him gnash his teeth, and stride cursing about the room,
was to see a patient walking up the steps which led to
the door of Scarsdale, his opposite neighbour. Scarsdale
had a fairly busy practice, and received his people at
home from ten to twelve, so that I got quite used to
seeing Cullingworth fly out of his chair, and rush raving
to the window. He would diagnose the cases, too, and
estimate their money value until he was hardly
articulate.
"There you are!" he would suddenly yell; "see that
man with a limp! Every morning he goes. Displaced
semilunar cartilage, and a three months' job. The man's
worth thirty-five shillings a week. And there! I'm
hanged if the woman with the rheumatic arthritis isn't
round in her bath-chair again.
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