Page:The Great Secret.djvu/21

Rh "Do you feel a fluttering of the heart?" asked the doctor.

"No," replied the patient.

"But if you were to walk rapidly up a hill, would you?"

"I think I might."

"Ah! very bad symptoms," continued the doctor, with an ominous shake of his head. "You are in a most critical state, I can assure you—heart disorganised, liver abnormally enlarged, kidneys seriously deranged—"

"How long have I got to live?" asked the patient, with the first twinkle of humour in his wearied eyes that he had been able to call up for some time.

"I cannot answer that question, but you must be very careful. I shall write you out a course of treatment, and I think you will find this place suit you, if you stay long enough."

The doctor took him to the bath-room and ordered him a vapour bath with a mustard pack and then filled up a form for three days' treatment, in which massage formed part.

He obeyed the doctor's advice, but added a little to it, as he had no desire to stay longer than he could help in this nest of valetudinarians, and opened the bathman's eyes when he told him what the doctor had ordered. It was the most heroic course that had ever been attempted at that health resort.

"I never knew the doctor push on a patient like this before," said the bathman, as he obeyed the supposed orders from headquarters. "Why, you will be better in a week."

"That's what the doctor wants—to work a miracle," replied the audacious Philip, as he plunged recklessly