Marjorie Bowen

“ The spring sun cast precise shadows from the posts of the footway and from the porticoes of the mansions; in the plane trees in the centre it fell in a moving tangle of quivering light.
Mr. Beauchamp watched the blackbird, which was swift, vivid, and noiseless, in the tall uncut grass.
A man so bent that the sunlight rested on his back, and his face was in the shadow, went by with a basket of watercress, and then a hackney coach lazily dragged over the cobbles, the driver absorbed in an old copy of The Gazette that gave stale news of the war. ”

“ Well, old rogue, an hour's delusion were cheap for a hundred guineas. Let this only make me think I shall live—live!"
"Sir," said Joshua Ward, a little discomfited, yet master of himself, "you talk like the ignorant. Did I not cure the King?"
"I think," smiled Mr. Beauchamp, "he was not so sick as I am."
"Unbelief will counteract any cure," announced the quack. "Yet, even if you doubt, that medicine will do you much good."
The patient's grey eyes fixed themselves in a wistful fashion on the self-satisfied, impudent face of the doctor. ”

“ Mr. Beauchamp smiled.
"I am a dying man; I took the fever. The life was hard; I have slept three nights in the rain—afterwards the smallpox. If this elixir"—he touched his pocket, and his smile deepened—"cures me, I will tell them—not else. I would rather they did not see me die; they think it was done finely—in a battle."
"Alas!" said the little maid.
"I should not talk to you like this. Why do you tempt me with your sympathy?" he asked wistfully.
"Ah, but the medicine is no good!" she cried. "Antimony he made it of, sir, and is trickery!" ”