aping up, he went on tiptoe to the consulting-room again, peeped to
see that all was right, and then, drawing himself up exactly as he had
seen the doctor act scores of times, he slowly approached the settee,
his face full of smiling interest, and sitting down in a chair beside
the imaginary patient, he went through a magnificent piece of
pantomime--so good that it was a pity there was no audience present to
admire. For Bob had taken the doctor's glasses from the chimney-piece,
put them on, and bent over the patient.

"Put out your tongue," he said. "Hum--ha! yes! a little foul."

Then he felt an imaginary pulse, his head on one side, and an imaginary
watch in his hand.

"That will do," he said, returning the imaginary watch to its airy fob.
"Now sit up."

Bob's ear was applied for a few moments to the phantom patient's chest.

"Breathe hard. That's it. Now more fully. Yes. Now a very long
breath."

So real was the proceeding that a spectator would have filled up the
void in his mind as Bob changed his position, holding his head now at
the patient's back.

"Hah!" he ejaculated, as he rose. "A little congestion! Stop a
moment."

He fetched a stethoscope from the chimney-piece, but instead of using it
at once, proceeded to lay his hand here and there upon his imaginary
patient's breast, and tap the back over and over again.

"Hah!" he ejaculated once more, as he applied his stethoscope now after
a most accurate pantomimic unbuttoning of vest and opening of a
shirt-front. "Yes, a little congestion!" he said again; and going back
to the chimney-piece, he set the stethoscope on end as if it were a
little fancy candlestick, took up a morocco case, and unhooking it,
extracted therefrom a tiny thermometer, whose bulb he placed beneath his
patient's arm-pit, and he was just about to see to what height the
sufferer's temperature had risen, when there were steps again, and the
boy had hardly time to hide the little tester, when the door opened,
and, with a wild, dilated look in her eyes, Rich appeared again.

"Get me a small bottle," she said hastily.

"'Ain't it no better, Miss?"

"Don't talk to me!" cried Rich; "the pain is maddening. Is my father
still asleep?"

"Yes, Miss; shall I wake him?"

"No, no. The bottle--the bottle!"

The boy hastily took a clean bottle from a drawer, and fitted it with a
new cork from another, by which time, with the knowledge of one who had
before now made up prescript