"Attending to your wounded man, Louis Blanc, to be sure; and he
seemed to speak to him as wisely as if he had walked the hospitals,
and regularly passed for an M.D."

"Indeed!" said the doctor, with a mischievous grin. "Then I must pay
him off for interfering with my patients."

"Ah, doctor, you're too fond of practical jokes. You never let slip
an opportunity of 'paying off' your friends for something or other.
It's a bad habit. Practical jokes are very bad things--shockingly
bad," said Mr. Wilson, as he put on his fur cap, and wound a thick
shawl round his throat, preparatory to leaving the room.

As Mr. Wilson gave utterance to this opinion, he passed Harry
Somerville, who was still staring at the fire in deep mental
abstraction, and, as he did so, gave his tilted chair a very slight
push backwards with his finger--an action which caused Harry to toss
up his legs, grasp convulsively with both hands at empty air, and
fall with a loud noise and an angry yell to the ground, while his
persecutor vanished from the scene.

"O you outrageous villain!" cried Harry, shaking his fist at the
door, as he slowly gathered himself up; "I might have expected that."

"Quite so," said the doctor; "you might. It was very neatly done,
undoubtedly. Wilson deserves credit for the way in which it was
executed."

"He deserves to be executed for doing it at all," replied Harry,
rubbing his elbow as he resumed his seat.