"But I come to you to get that hen-coop out of my head, not to be reminded of it.

Everybody asks me about the damned thing, and you follow everybody else.

I wish it and I were at the bottom of the sea together!" This speech had the effect of really interesting the doctor in my present condition, which was indeed one of chronic irritation and extreme excitability, alternating with fits of the very blackest despair.

Instead of offending my gentleman I had put him on his mettle, and for half an hour he honored me with the most exhaustive inquisition ever elicited from a medical man.

His panacea was somewhat in the nature of an anti-climax, but at least it had the merits of simplicity and of common sense.