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THE HEIR OF APPLEBITE.

CHAPTER IX.

SHOWS THAT DOCTORS DIFFER.

[Illustration: H]Having christened his child, Agamemnon felt it to be his
bounden duty to have him vaccinated; but his wife's mother, with a
perversity strongly characteristic of the _genus_, strenuously opposed Dr.
Jenner's plan of repealing the small pox[1], and insisted upon having him
inoculated. Poor Mrs. Applebite was sorely perplexed between her habitual
reverence for the opinions of her mama and the dread which she naturally
felt of converting the face of the infant heir into a plum-pudding.
Agamemnon had evidently determined to be positive upon this point, and all
that could be extracted from him was the one word--vaccination!

[1] Baylis.

To which Mrs. Waddledot replied,

"Vaccination, indeed!--as though the child were a calf! I'm sure and
certain that the extreme dulness of young people of the present day is
entirely owing to vaccination--it imbues them with a very stupid portion
of the animal economy."

As Agamemnon could not understand her, he again ejaculated--"Vaccination!"

"But, my dear," rejoined Mrs. Applebite, "Mama has had so much experience
that her opinion is worth listening to; I know that you give the
preference to--"

"Vaccination!" interrupted Collumpsion.

"And so do I; but we have heard of grown-up people--who had always
considered themselves secure--taking the small pox, dear."

"To be sure we have," chimed in Mrs. Waddledot; "and it's a very dreadful
thing, after indulgent and tender parents have been at the expense of
nursing, clothing, physicking, teaching music, dancing, Italian, French,
geography, drawing, and the use of the globes, to a child, to have it
carried off because a misguided fondness has insisted upon--"

"Vaccination!" shouted _pater_ Collumpsion.

"Exactly!" continued the "wife's mother." "Now inoculate at once, say I,
before the child's short-coated."

Agamemnon rose from his seat, and advancing deliberately and solemnly to
the table at which his wife and his wife's mother were seated, he slowly
raised his dexter arm above his head, and then, having converted his hand
into a fist, he dashed his contracted digitals upon the rosewood as though
he dared not trust himself with more than one word, and that one
was--"Vaccination!"

Mrs. Waddledot's first impulse was to jump out of her turban, in which she
would have succeeded had not the mystic rolls of gauze wh