Beaufort Bright

“ These are not days to be putting your hands in your pockets and staring about. You must be up and away—here, there, everywhere—or you’d better give up the race at once. But if we are all to be so bustling, all so fleet of foot, all so strong of wind, who’s to win? ”

“ Then the temptation came strong upon me, “Sophia has not a sixpence in her pocket—Lydia wants shoes. If I do not write him a prescription, Peters will think it was no use his coming. He’ll never pay me if I don’t. He wants no physic, but it will do him no harm—and me a great deal of good. Shall I give him a linctus, oxymel of squills, syrup of poppies and a little nitre? It’s innocent enough—shall I?”
“Hum! ahem! that is to say, Mr. Peters. In the Devil’s name, my good sir, you want no physic! If you stay a minute longer I shall be driven to it, in spite of myself!” ”

“ For I am supposed to hold in my power occasional consultations, and Barlington has always his eye to the main chance. He is a little, shrewd man, with an excitable manner, and a disposition to gossip. I have heard that he sometimes becomes so interested in discussing the prevalent topics of the day, that he has left his patients without entering upon the subject of their ailments. I dare say he would do a good action as willingly as any other man; but he has a patronising air. When I “meet him,” he “hums” and “hahs,” puts his hands in his pockets, and looks at his gold repeater. ”

“ I want to run without knocking my neighbours before me, sending them flying into space. I want to live, but I don’t want to prevent others living too.
But it isn’t the spirit of the time. If I do not boast and bluster, I’m nothing. And therefore it is that I sit at home looking at the hundreds that pass and repass, but nobody turns in. They cross the road to Barlington, or they go round the corner to Scorlings, and I sit waiting for the patients that never come.
I go up-stairs to my drawing-room, and look up Clifton Street. People are coming down quite fast. There’s Sims. ”

“ He has no children—no relations to stretch out craving hands towards him; but he loves his money, and likes to hear the chink of it as he paces up and down the sick room. His friends say: “An extraordinary man, Barlington! Lets no grass grow under his feet! He drove down to Fetterkin yesterday morning, to be present at an operation; came back at eleven, a.m., sees his patients; off again by the train to Limpfold, catches the return at five, and pockets his fifty guineas for the day;—a fact—I had it from himself.” ”

“ I arrived only to see her lying still and calm enough, the victim of gross ignorance. Scorlings is a loud-talking, blustering man. When he goes into a house, he makes coarse jokes with the women, and is hale fellow, well met, with the men. ”

“ There’s nothing left but a long line of floating white steam, that curls over and under, over and under, and vanishes before the wind. Your coach may have knocked down the greengrocer’s boy, but why doesn’t he get out of the way? ”

“ And Mr. Barlington is just the man to tell it with infinite gusto. It is not long since Mr. Barlington was talking to my pretty little cousin, Mrs. Moreton. She was wondering how I, Dr. Plympton, was getting on.
“Oh!” says Barlington, “I should say Plympton has a fairish practice—a fairish practice. Jeremiah Peters, Esq., is a patient of his. He’s of the right sort. Plympton’s doing pretty well.”
And he strokes his chin, and blows the dust off his velvet cuffs. And then he said that he did not see why I should not have a first-rate practice in Rexford. ”

“ I wondered how it would feel if I were to pay off everybody, and owe nothing. I used to look knowingly up at Sophia when she came to see what I was about, and say mysteriously, “There was no knowing what Plympton’s improvement might not do for us, after all.”
But the six months went by. The “taxes” had not been paid; the “gas” must be attended to; Mrs. Dubbins had sent three times for the amount of her bill; and my improved plane, as Barnet would say, “walked into the middle of next week.” Barlington, whom I had consulted, didn’t think much of it. “It might do, or it might not. ”