"
"Very true; but think of the urgency of the case. Three or four
calls during twenty-four hours were necessary, and two whole nights
I passed at her bedside."
"And yet the charge appears to me enormous. Call it forty, and I
will hand you the amount at once."
The doctor hesitates. "I cannot afford to lose ten dollars, which is
justly my due, Mr. Wilton."
"Suit yourself, doctor. Take forty, and receipt the bill, or stick
to your first charge, and wait till I am ready to pay it. Fifty
dollars is no trifle, I can tell you."
And this is the man whose life might have been a blank but for the
doctor's skill!
Again we are travelling onward. The unpaid bill is left in Mr.
Wilton's hand, and yet the doctor half regrets that he had not
submitted to the imposition. Money is greatly needed just now, and
there seems little prospect of getting any.
Again and again the horse is stopped at some well-known post. A poor
welcome has the doctor to-day. Some bills are collected, but their
amount is discouragingly small. Everybody appears to feel
astonishingly healthy, and have almost forgotten that they ever had
occasion for a physician. There is one consolation, however:
sickness will come again, and then, perhaps, the unpaid bill may be
recollected. Homeward goes the doctor. He is naturally of a cheerful
disposition; but now he is seriously threatened with a fit of the
blues.
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