"Pray step in, madam," said Dr. Horace Wilkinson,
with his very best sympathetic manner. In this case,
at least, there could be no mistake as to diagnosis.
"If you will sit on this sofa, I shall very soon make
you feel much more comfortable."

He poured a little water from his carafe into a
saucer, made a compress of lint, fastened it over the
injured eye, and secured the whole with a spica
bandage, secundum artem.

"Thank ye kindly, sir," said the woman, when his
work was finished; "that's nice and warm, and may God
bless your honour. But it wasn't about my eye at all
that I came to see a doctor."

"Not your eye?" Dr. Horace Wilkinson was
beginning to be a little doubtful as to the
advantages of quick diagnosis. It is an excellent
thing to be able to surprise a patient, but hitherto
it was always the patient who had surprised him.

"The baby's got the measles."

The mother parted the red shawl, and exhibited a
little dark, black-eyed gypsy baby, whose swarthy
face was all flushed and mottled with a dark-red
rash. The child breathed with a rattling sound, and
it looked up at the doctor with eyes which were heavy
with want of sleep and crusted together at the lids.