I am quite well now. Would you kindly order the nurse to
bring me my clothes to-morrow morning, and I will go.'
This he said with the quavering voice of one who speaks because he
has made up his mind to speak. A certain something, I believe a
vague molluscous form of conscience, made him wriggle and shift
uneasily upon his chair as he spoke.
'No, no,' said Robert, 'you are not fit to go. Make yourself
comfortable, my dear sir. There is no reason why you should go.'
'There is something I don't understand about it. I want to go.'
'It would ruin my character as a professional man to let a patient
in your condition leave the house. The weather is unfavourable. I
cannot--I must not consent.'
'Where am I? I don't understand it. I want to understand it.'
'Your friends wish you to remain where you are for the present.'
'I have no friends.'
'You have one, at least, who puts his house here at your service.'
'There's something about it I don't like. Do you suppose I am
incapable of taking care of myself?'
'I do indeed,' answered his son with firmness.
'Then you are quite mistaken,' said Andrew, angrily. 'I am quite
well enough to go, and have a right to judge for myself. It is very
kind of you, but I am in a free country, I believe.'
'No doubt. All honest men are free in this country. But--'
He saw that his father winced, and said no more. Andrew resumed,
after a pause in which he had been rousing his feeble
drink-exhausted anger,
'I tell you I will not be treated like a child.
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