‘Really, Mr Aulfus,’ said Sir Sykes, half apologetically, half in dudgeon; but the other cut him short with: ‘Excuse me, Sir Sykes. _Dr_ Aulfus, if you please. It is perhaps the weakness of a professional purist, but I do like to be dubbed a doctor; as your noble neighbour and connection, the Earl, no doubt has a preference for the title of “My Lord.” It has cost me dear enough, sir, that handle to my name; kept me, I may safely say, out of a good four hundred a year of practice I might have had, since old women and heads of families are shy of sending for a regular physician; and that’s why such fellows as Lancetter at High Tor, and Druggett the apothecary in Pebworth High Street, rattle about the county, feeling pulses and sending out physic, when a man who has more learning in his little finger than—— You smile, sir; and indeed I was unduly warm. No selfish love of lucre, believe me, prompted my remarks, but a sincere scorn for the prejudices and gullibility, if the word be not too strong, of our Devonshire Bœotians.’
By this time the doctor had succeeded in getting Sir Sykes into a neighbouring room, the door of which stood invitingly open, and thus securing the sleeper against the chance of being rudely awakened from his slumber. The baronet too had employed a minute or two in reflections which shewed him how unseemly was the part which he had been about to play, while some dim consciousness that it was unfair to visit on Jasper the unwelcome recognition and jocular impertinence of Mr Wilkins, began to creep into his perturbed mind.
‘You forget, Dr Aulfus,’ he said mildly enough, ‘that I have as yet heard no details as to the injuries which my son has sustained. They are not, I apprehend, of a very serious or indeed dangerous character?’
‘Umph! Dislocation of right shoulder, now reduced, but attended with much pain; severe contusion on temple; some bad bruises, and complete prostration of nervous system from the stunning blow and violent concussion of spinal cord,’ dryly rejoined the doctor, summing up the facts as though he had been a judge putting the pith of some case before a jury. ‘These are all the results that I know of’—— And he paused, hesitating, so that Sir Sykes for the first time felt a genuine twinge of alarm.