There he sat playing chess--always he
seemed to be playing chess--with his son, a medical
student, burly and rugged already as himself.
"Shut the door, shut the door!" he called. "Come in,
boys; here, let me brush that snow off you--it's my move
Charlie, remember--now, what the devil's the matter?"
Then we would pant out our hurried exclamations, both
together.
"Bah!" he growled, "ill nothing! Mere belly ache, I
guess."
That was his term, his favorite word, for an undiagnosed
disease--"belly ache." They call it supergastral aesthesia
now. In a city house, it sounds better. Yet how we hung
upon the doctor's good old Saxon term, yearning and hoping
that it might be that.
But even as he growled the doctor had taken down a lantern
from a hook, thrown on a huge, battered fur coat that
doubled his size, and was putting medicines--a very
shopful it seemed--into a leather case.
"Your horse is done up," he said. "We'll put my mare in.
Come and give me a hand, Charlie."
He was his own hostler and stable-man, he and his burly
son. Yet how quickly and quietly he moved, the lantern
swinging on his arm, as he buckled the straps. "What kind
of a damn fool tug is this you've got?" he would say.
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