What am I to do! Oh, good heaven, what am I to do!' 'Don't waste your time in clasping your hands and biting your fingers,' responded the practical turnkey, taking him by the elbow, 'but come along with me.' The turnkey conducted him--trembling from head to foot, and constantly crying under his breath, What was he to do! while his irresolute fingers bedabbled the tears upon his face--up one of the common staircases in the prison to a door on the garret story.

Upon which door the turnkey knocked with the handle of his key.
'Come in!' cried a voice inside.
The turnkey, opening the door, disclosed in a wretched, ill-smelling little room, two hoarse, puffy, red-faced personages seated at a rickety table, playing at all-fours, smoking pipes, and drinking brandy.
'Doctor,' said the turnkey, 'here's a gentleman's wife in want of you without a minute's loss of time!' The doctor's friend was in the positive degree of hoarseness, puffiness, red-facedness, all-fours, tobacco, dirt, and brandy; the doctor in the comparative--hoarser, puffier, more red-faced, more all-fourey, tobaccoer, dirtier, and brandier.

The doctor was amazingly shabby, in a torn and darned rough-weather sea-jacket, out at elbows and eminently short of buttons (he had been in his time the experienced surgeon carried by a passenger ship), the dirtiest white trousers conceivable by mortal man, carpet slippers, and no visible linen.

'Childbed ?' said the doctor.

'I'm the boy!' With that the doctor took a comb from the chimney-piece and stuck his hair upright--which appeared to be his way of washing himself--produced a professional chest or case, of most abject appearance, from the cupboard where his cup and saucer and coals were, settled his chin in the frowsy wrapper round his neck, and became a ghastly medical scarecrow.
The doctor and the debtor ran down-stairs, leaving the turnkey to return to the lock, and made for the debtor's room.