I
want a peg badly."
We retraced our way over the Church Ridge, and I arrived at Dr. Heatherlegh's
house shortly after midnight.
His attempts toward my cure commenced almost immediately, and for a week I
never left his sight. Many a time in the course of that week did I bless the
good fortune which had thrown me in contact with Simla's best and kindest
doctor. Day by day my spirits grew lighter and more equable. Day by day, too,
I became more and more inclined to fall in with Heatherlegh's "spectral
illusion" theory, implicating eyes, brain, and stomach. I wrote to Kitty,
telling her that a slight sprain caused by a fall from my horse kept me
indoors for a few days; and that I should be recovered before she had time to
regret my absence.
Heatherlegh's treatment was simple to a degree. It consisted of liver pills,
cold-water baths, and strong exercise, taken in the dusk or at early dawn--
for, as he sagely observed:--"A man with a sprained ankle doesn't walk a dozen
miles a day, and your young woman might be wondering if she saw you."
At the end of the week, after much examination of pupil and pulse, and strict
injunction' as to diet and pedestrianism, Heatherlegh dismissed me as
brusquely as he had taken charge of me.
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