And you might be ill one of these days." "What, then ?" "It would be humiliating to send for me if you treat me like an enemy." "You are not the only doctor in Bridgetown." "But I am the least dangerous." She grew suddenly suspicious of him, aware that he was permitting himself to rally her, and in a measure she had already yielded to it.
She stiffened, and looked him over again.
"You make too free, I think," she rebuked him.
"A doctor's privilege." "I am not your patient.

Please to remember it in future." And on that, unquestionably angry, she departed.
"Now is she a vixen or am I a fool, or is it both ?" he asked the blue vault of heaven, and then went into the shed.
It was to be a morning of excitements.

As he was leaving an hour or so later, Whacker, the younger of the other two physicians, joined him--an unprecedented condescension this, for hitherto neither of them had addressed him beyond an occasional and surly "good-day!" "If you are for Colonel Bishop's, I'll walk with you a little way, Doctor Blood," said he.

He was a short, broad man of five-and-forty with pendulous cheeks and hard blue eyes.
Peter Blood was startled.

But he dissembled it.
"I am for Government House," said he.
"Ah! To be sure! The Governor's lady." And he laughed; or perhaps he sneered.