If you want a gossip, get the parson; he's got time enough on his hands.

A man don't have to work so many hours a day saving souls as he does saving bodies." Lot laughed.

"And neither souls nor bodies saved by either of you, after all," said he, "for the Lord saves the one, if he has so ordained it; and as for the other, your nostrums only work so long as death does not choose to come." "Have it your own way; save your own soul and your own body, as ye please, for all me," said the doctor, who was adjudged capable when crossed of being surly to a dying man; and he made for the door.
"For God's sake stop," cried Lot, "and come back here and listen! I did not call you for nothing.

The lives and deaths of more than one are at stake; come back here!" The doctor clamped his medicine-chest hard on the floor.

"Be quick about it, then," said he, and sat down in a chair at Lot's bedside.
Lot fumbled under his pillow and produced a folded paper which he handed to the doctor.