"
I lay down, and soon fell fast asleep, and I remembered nothing, until I
awoke about eleven o'clock next morning, and heard Mr Bang speaking to
Wagtail, at whose bedside he was standing.
"Pepperpot, my dear, be thankful--you are quite cool--a fine moisture on
your skin this morning--be thankful, my little man how did your blister
rise?"
"My good friend," quoth Wagtail, in a thin weak voice, "I can't tell--I
don't know; but this I perceive, that I am unable to rise, whether it
has risen or no."
"Ah--weak," quoth Gelid, who had now entered the room.
"Nay," said Pepperpot, "not so weak as deucedly sore, and on a very
unromantic spot, my dears."
"Why," said Aaron, "the pit of the stomach is not a very genteel
department, nor the abdomen neither."
"Why," said Wagtail, "I have no blister on either of those places, but
if it were possible to dream of such a thing, I would say it had been
clapped on"
Here his innate propriety tongue--tied him.
"Eh?" said Aaron; "what--has the caustico that was intended for the
frontiers of Belgium been clapped by mistake on the broad Pays Bas?"
And so in very truth it turned out; for while we slept, the patient had
risen, and sat down on the blister that lay, as already mentioned, on a
chair at his bedside, and again toppling into bed, had fallen into a
sound sleep, from which he had but a few moments before the time I write
of awoke.
"Why, now," continued Aaron, to the doctor of the Wave who had just
entered--"why, here is a discovery, my dear doctor.
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