"I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the
matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had
finished. But I will tell you what is not the matter with me. I have not
got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee, I cannot tell
you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything, else,
however, I _have_ got."
And I told him how I came to discover it all.
Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and
then hit me over the chest when I wasn't expecting it--a cowardly thing
to do, I call it--and immediately afterward butted me with the side of
his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and
folded it up and gave it to me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.
I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist's, and handed it in.
The man read it, and then handed it back.
He said he didn't keep it.