He meant to make deeds of them, as far as he could, considering their immense extension; and except for the sensitive social name, he was of single-minded purpose.
Turning to the steps of a chemist's shop to get a prescription made up for his Nataly's doctoring of her domestics, he was arrested by a rap on his elbow; and no one was near; and there could not be a doubt of the blow--a sharp hard stroke, sparing the funny-bone, but ringing.

His head, at the punctilio bump, throbbed responsively--owing to which or indifference to the prescription, as of no instant requirement, he pursued his course, resembling mentally the wanderer along a misty beach, who hears cannon across the waters.
He certainly had felt it.

He remembered the shock: he could not remember much of pain.

How about intimations?
His asking caused a smile.
Very soon the riddle answered itself.

He had come into view of the diminutive marble cavalier of the infantile cerebellum; recollecting a couplet from the pen of the disrespectful Satirist Peter, he thought of a fall: his head and his elbow responded simultaneously to the thought.
All was explained save his consequent rightabout from the chemist's shop: and that belongs to the minor involutions of circumstances and the will.