His features had immediately assumed an expression of intense pain, his eyes staring wildly, and, clapping his hands to his face, he had rocked his head backward and forward in speechless agony.
At the Doctor's sharp appeal the Deacon lifted his head.
"It's all right," said the Doctor, as soon as he saw his face.

"The Deacon had a smart attack of neuralgic pain.

That 's all.

Very severe, but not at all dangerous." The Doctor kept his countenance, but his diaphragm was shaking the change in iris waistcoat-pockets with subterranean laughter.

He had looked through his spectacles and seen at once what had happened.
The Deacon, not being in the habit of taking his nourishment in the congealed state, had treated the ice-cream as a pudding of a rare species, and, to make sure of doing himself justice in its distribution, had taken a large mouthful of it without the least precaution.