By this time he had got his great quilted dressing-gown about him, in the folds of which Varbarriere looked more unwieldy still than in his drawing-room costume.
"I must read about that Algeria; have they got any diseases there? plague--yellow fever--ague! By my faith! if the place is tolerably healthy, it would be no such bad plan to let the young fool take a turn on that gridiron, and learn thoroughly the meaning of independence."
So Monsieur Varbarriere, with a variety of subjects to think over, pursued his toilet.
Sir Jekyl's hour was eight o'clock, and punctually his man, Tomlinson, knocked at his door.
"Hollo! Is that Tomlinson?" answered the voice from within.
"See, Tomlinson, I say, it's very ridiculous; but I'm hanged if I can stir, that confounded gout's got hold of my foot again. You'll have to force the door. Send some one down to the town for Doctor Pratt--d'ye see?--and get me some handkerchiefs, and don't be all day."
The faithful Tomlinson listening, with a snowy shirt and a pair of socks on his arm and the tips of his fingers fiddling with the door-handle, listening at the other side of the panel, with forehead inclined forward and mouth open, looked, I am sorry to say, a good deal amused, although he answered in a concerned tone; and departed to execute his orders.
"Guv'nor took in toe again," he murmured, with a solemn leer, as he paused before the butler's broad Marseilles waistcoat.
"The gout; can't stir a peg, and he's locked hisself in, as usual, over night."
"Lawk!" exclaimed the butler, and I dare say both would have liked to laugh, but neither cared to compromise himself.
"Chisel and mallet, Mr. Story, we shall want, if you please, and some one to go at once for the doctor to the town."
"I know--yes--hinstantly," ejaculated the butler.
So things proceeded. Pratt, M. D., the medical practitioner of the village, whose yellow hall door and broad brass plate, and shop window round the corner, with the two time-honoured glass jars, one of red the other of green fluid, representing physic in its most attractive hues, were not more widely known than his short, solemn, red face, blue chin, white whiskers, and bald pate, was roused by the messenger's summons, at his toilet, and peeped over his muslin blind to discover the hand that was ringing so furiously among his withered hollyhocks; and at the same time Tomlinson and the butler were working with ripping chisel, mallet, and even a poker, to effect an entrance.