"I take my complaints one at a time, thank you," said he. "I wouldn't be
so greedy as to have all those--eh, Munro, what?--when many another
poor devil hasn't got an ache to his back." The four posts of his bed
quivered with his laughter. "Do what you like, laddie--but I say, mind,
if anything should happen, no tomfoolery over my grave. If you put so
much as a stone there, by Crums, Munro, I'll come back in the dead of
the night and plant it on the pit of your stomach."

Nearly three weeks passed before he could set his foot to the
ground again. He wasn't such a bad patient, after all; but he rather
complicated my treatment by getting in all sorts of phials and powders,
and trying experiments upon his own symptoms. It was impossible to keep
him quiet, and our only means of retaining him in bed was to allow him
all the work that he could do there.

He wrote copiously, built up models of his patent screen, and banged
off pistols at his magnetic target, which he had rigged tip on the
mantelpiece. Nature has given him a constitution of steel, however, and
he shook off his malady more quickly and more thoroughly than the most
docile of sufferers.

In the meantime, Mrs. Cullingworth and I ran the practice together. As
a substitute for him I was a dreadful failure. They would not believe in
me in the least. I felt that I was as flat as water after champagne.
I could not address them from the stairs, nor push them about, nor
prophesy to the anaeemic women. I was much too solemn and demure after
what they had been accustomed to. However, I held the thing together
as best I could, and I don't think that he found the practice much the
worse when he was able to take it over. I could not descend to what I
thought was unprofessional, but I did my very best to keep the wheels
turning.

Well, I know that I am a shocking bad story-teller, but I just try to
get things as near the truth as I can manage it. If I only knew how to
colour it up, I could make some of this better reading. I can get along
when I am on one line, but it is when I have to bring in a second line
of events that I understand what C. means when he says that I will never
be able to keep myself in nibs by what I earn in literature.

The second line is this, that I had written to my mother on the same
night that I wrote to you last, telling her that there need no longer be
a shadow of a disagreement between us, because everything was arranged,
and I was going to l