The Doctor's Fee, Part V [pp. 35-47]

THE DOCTOR'S FEE.
"Here's a sick-call, father!-a sick-call!"
The good father moved slightly, and Mrs. Brown, inspirited
by this sign of success, repeated in a still louder tone:
"A sick-call, and you must take a cup of coffee before you
start out. Won't you get up, father, and go to a sick-call?"
"Yes," was the reply in a sleepy tone.
"Then drink this coffee."
"Drink!" said Dr. Ferrison.
"You must hurry, father, and drink your coffee and go to a
sick-call! " screamed Mrs. Brown persistently in his ear.
"Yes," he responded again, and began to drink as it was
held to his lips, but went to sleep in the act, and another course
of walking and water was deemed necessary. But an impression had been conveyed to his mind. He stopped suddenly in
the middle of the floor after a few turns; his face took an
expression of painful perplexity; he moved his right arm restlessly, trving to release it from the grasp of his supporters, and when
their hold was cautiously withdrawn, and he found it at liberty,
he began passing his hand in a bewildered way over the left side
of his chest and then the right, until it became evident that he
was feeling for a pocket.
"What are you looking for?" asked Dr. Ferrison in his ear.
"My-bre-via-" he tried to answer; but his hand fell to
his side, his chin to his breast, and his countenance lost the ray
of intelligence it had worn for a moment. The doctors, nevertheless, were satisfied.
"He's coming round!" said Dr. Clayton cheerfully, bestowing a liberal dash of water over the bowed face and head as he
spoke.
"I have had some tolerably rough practice in the way of sickcalls," said the good padre, as he sat by his fireside some days
later talking to Dr. Ferrison, "but nothing to compare in any respect to the one on which I was journeying all that night."
They both could afford now to laugh at the recollection of
how the poor padre had been kept up to the mark of walking off
the effects of the opiate by the exhortation constantly reiterated
in his ear that he "must hurry to a sick-call."
"The dim recollection I have of it is that of a hideous nightmare," said he. "My mind was in a mist or rather, I should
say, in a London fog, with the strangest muddle of ideas coming
and going, the dominant one being that I was hurrying through
a very hard rain, that swept over me in blinding, ice-cold gusts,
45