Here the
patients waited after having been given their `letters' at mid-day; and the long rows of them, bottles and gallipots in hand, some tattered and dirty, others decent enough, sitting in the dimness, men and women of all ages, children, gave one an impression which was weird and horrible.
"Remember," said he, "I am the most confiding of your
patients; remember I obey you blindly, and that consequently "
So little then did our doctors delight in death, that they discharged the corpse after a single fee; but they were not so disgusted with their living
patient; concerning whose case they immediately agreed, and fell to prescribing with great diligence.
The field was now left to the physician and his
patient, while the different personages who remained gathered around the latter, with faces expressing the various degrees of interest that each one felt in his condition.
"'I feel that I owe you a great many apologies for my abrupt departure yesterday, doctor,' said my
patient.
Patients who had chronic diseases or whose lives had long been worn threadbare, like old Featherstone's, had been at once inclined to try him; also, many who did not like paying their doctor's bills, thought agreeably of opening an account with a new doctor and sending for him without stint if the children's temper wanted a dose, occasions when the old practitioners were often crusty; and all persons thus inclined to employ Lydgate held it likely that he was clever.
We differed entirely in the conclusions which we drew from the
patient's pulse.
'He will do now,' says the doctor, washing his hands, and looking at the
patient with growing disfavour.
Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinised his
patient carefully, both as he saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in the range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrown amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call out something new to the surface of his character.
For half an hour he worked over his
patient. At the end of that time he gave him a brandy and soda and placed a box of cigarettes before him.
"I come to ask your opinion, sir, on the state of my heart," she said; "and I am recommended by a
patient, who has consulted you with advantage to herself." She placed a card on the doctor's writing-desk, and added: "I have become acquainted with the lady, by being one of the lodgers in her house."
Then I caught the
patient's eye and followed it, but could trace nothing as it looked into the moonlight sky, except a big bat, which was flapping its silent and ghostly way to the west.