198 DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 



Cardenden. We were delighted to meet a friend 

 of our doctor while among so many strangers, and, 

 having told him this, I asked who were the owners 

 of the happy faces that surrounded him. They 

 were all Scottish, I found, and were made up of 

 Dr Henderson, in practice at Kirkcaldy, four 

 newly-fledged surgeons one the great star of 

 promise of his year a young clergyman, an ac- 

 countant and a student of singing. This happy 

 group seemed happiest when the members of it 

 were butting at each other with some laughing 

 reminiscence. I had been so puzzled by the 

 Helminthologist joke that curiosity prompted me 

 to ask its meaning. It was the reverend gentle- 

 man, the recipient of one of Dr Rorie's digs, that 

 told me in flavoured Scotch the following tale : 



" I must tell you, Mr Chairman, that the doctor 

 is a man of whom we are very proud. We are 

 proud of him from his every side but particularly so 

 for his wonderful abilities at diagnosis. If he has 

 a failing it is his dislike to long tales of woes ; he 

 wants to see the woes and to guess the tales. Now 

 a son of a poor neighbour of ours had the misfortune 

 to trip backwards and sit in a pail of scalding water. 

 When our dear friend, the doctor, was fetched he 

 gave the mother no chance of telling him anything 

 of the pail of scalding water but said at once : 

 ' Now, my lad, show me what's troubling you/ and, 

 when he got a view, pronounced it the biggest 

 ringworm he had ever seen." 



This made it the doctor's turn. " That tale will 

 soon be needing patches ; but you told it well, 

 Douglas, and it will be only fair to let the company 

 hear of one of your recent triumphs." 



