The Two Doctors Change Patients

Dr Fillgrave still continued his visits to Greshamsbury, for Lady
Arabella had not yet mustered the courage necessary for swallowing
her pride and sending once more for Dr Thorne. Nothing pleased Dr
Fillgrave more than those visits.

He habitually attended grander families, and richer people; but then,
he had attended them habitually. Greshamsbury was a prize taken from
the enemy; it was his rock of Gibraltar, of which he thought much
more than of any ordinary Hampshire or Wiltshire which had always
been within his own kingdom.

He was just starting one morning with his post-horses for
Greshamsbury, when an impudent-looking groom, with a crooked nose,
trotted up to his door. For Joe still had a crooked nose, all the
doctor's care having been inefficacious to remedy the evil effects
of Bridget's little tap with the rolling-pin. Joe had no written
credentials, for his master was hardly equal to writing, and
Lady Scatcherd had declined to put herself into further personal
communication with Dr Fillgrave; but he had effrontery enough to
deliver any message.

"Be you Dr Fillgrave?" said Joe, with one finger just raised to his
cocked hat.

"Yes," said Dr Fillgrave, with one foot on the step of the carriage,
but pausing at the sight of so well-turned-out a servant. "Yes; I am
Dr Fillgrave."

"Then you be to go to Boxall Hill immediately; before anywhere else."

"Boxall Hill!" said the doctor, with a very angry frown.

"Yes; Boxall Hill: my master's place--my master is Sir Louis
Scatcherd, baronet. You've heard of him, I suppose?"

Dr Fillgrave had not his mind quite ready for such an occasion. So he
withdrew his foot from the carriage step, and rubbing his hands one
over another, looked at his own hall door for inspiration. A single
glance at his face was sufficient to show that no ordinary thoughts
were being turned over within his breast.

"Well!" said Joe, thinking that his master's name had not altogether
produced the magic effect which he had expected; remembering, also,
how submissive Greyson had always been, who, being a London doctor,
must be supposed to be a bigger man than this provincial fellow.
"Do you know as how my master is dying, very like, while you stand
there?"

"What is your master's disease?" said the doctor, facing Joe, slowly,
and still rubbing his hands. "What ails him? What is the matter with
him?"

"Oh; the matter with him? Well, to say it out at