Page:Robert Barr - Lord Stranleigh Philanthropist.djvu/14

 time his friend and colleague, Mackeller, broke down in health. Now, Mackeller was a much more stalwart man than the slim and elegant Stranleigh, yet a London specialist informed him that his nerves were gone; that worry and anxiety had for the last few years so strained the heart that the price of prolonged existence was complete cessation from work, and withdrawal from business of any kind.

An English specialist who has successfully attended a member of the Royal Family, thus attaining instantaneously a European fame that years of hard work would never have achieved, does not temper the wind to the shorn lamb, but states the result of his diagnosis with a terseness that rather appals the ordinary man. The blow in Mackeller's case was softened by the fact that the big-boned Scotchman did not believe a word the expert said. There was nothing the matter with him, he averred, but an occasional distressing shortness of breath. His trouble was bronchial, and not cardiac, he insisted. The famous physician shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

"If you know so much of your own condition, why trouble coming to me?" he asked, with some show of reason.

"It is quite impossible for me," continued