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 his 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. The consequence was a sensation as if a dentist were
killing the nerves of twenty-five teeth at once with hot irons, or cold
ones, which would hurt rather worse.
The Deacon swallowed something with a spasmodic effort, and recovered
pretty soon and received the congratulations of his friends. There were
different versions of the expressions he had used at the onset of his
complaint,--some of the reported exclamations involving a breach of
propriety, to say the least,--but it was agreed that a man in an attack
of neuralgy wasn't to be judged of by the rules that applied to other
folks.
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