So saying, Tressilian left the room.
"He is too hot," said the curate; "and I pray to God that He may grant
him the patience to deal with Varney as is fitting."
"Patience and Varney," said Mumblazen, "is worse heraldry than metal
upon metal. He is more false than a siren, more rapacious than a
griffin, more poisonous than a wyvern, and more cruel than a lion
rampant."
"Yet I doubt much," said the curate, "whether we can with propriety ask
from Sir Hugh Robsart, being in his present condition, any deed deputing
his paternal right in Mistress Amy to whomsoever--"
"Your reverence need not doubt that," said Will Badger, who entered as
he spoke, "for I will lay my life he is another man when he wakes than
he has been these thirty days past."
"Ay, Will," said the curate, "hast thou then so much confidence in
Doctor Diddleum's draught?"
"Not a whit," said Will, "because master ne'er tasted a drop on't,
seeing it was emptied out by the housemaid. But here's a gentleman, who
came attending on Master Tressilian, has given Sir Hugh a draught that
is worth twenty of yon un. I have spoken cunningly with him, and a
better farrier or one who hath a more just notion of horse and dog
ailment I have never seen; and such a one would never be unjust to a
Christian man."
"A farrier! you saucy groom--and by whose authority, pray?" said the
curate, rising in surprise and indignation; "or who will be warrant for
this new physician?"
"For authority, an it like your reverence, he had mine; and for warrant,
I trust I have not been five-and-twenty years in this house without
having right to warrant the giving of a draught to beast or body--I who
can gie a drench, and a ball, and bleed, or blister, if need, to my very
self."
The counsellors of the house of Robsart thought it meet to carry this
information instantly to Tressilian, who as speedily summoned before
him Wayland Smith, and demanded of him (in private, however) by what
authority he had ventured to administer any medicine to Sir Hugh
Robsart?
"Why," replied the artist, "your worship cannot but remember that I told
you I had made more progress into my master's--I mean the learned Doctor
Doboobie's--mystery than he was willing to own; and indeed half of his
quarrel and malice against me was that, besides that I got something too
deep into his secrets, several discerning persons, and particularly a
buxom young widow of Abingdon, preferred my prescriptions to his."