122 The Little Minister

those who said that the doctor was making a
curler of him.

There was, however, ground for gossip; for
Thrums folk seldom called in a doctor until it
was too late to cure them, and McQueen was not
the man to pay social visits. Of his skill we
knew fearsome stories, as that, by looking at
Archie Allardyce, who had come to broken bones
on a ladder, he discovered which rung Archie fell
from. When he entered a stuffy room he would
poke his staff through the window to let in fresh
air, and then fling down a shilling to pay for the
breakage. He was deaf in the right ear, and
therefore usually took the left side of prosy
people, thus, as he explained, making a blessing
of an affliction. “A pity I don’t hear better?”
I have heard him say. “Not at all. If my
misfortune, as you call it, were to be removed,
you can’t conceive how I should miss my deaf
ear.” He was a fine fellow, though brusque,
and I never saw him without his pipe until two
days before we buried him, which was five and
twenty years ago come Martinmas.

“We're all quite weel,” Jean said, apprehen-
sively, as she answered his knock on the manse
door, and she tried to be pleasant, too, for well
she knew that, if a doctor willed it, she could have
fever in five minutes.

“ Ay, Jean, I’ll soon alter that,” he replied,
ferociously. ‘Is the master in?”

“ Ffe’s at his sermon,” Jean said, with impor-
tance.

To interrupt the minister at such a moment
seemed sacrilege to her, for her up-bringing had