And now, when he walked down the street
in his high hat, people would say to one another,
"There goes John Dolittle, M.D.! There was a
time when he was the best known doctor in the
West Country--Look at him now--He hasn't
any money and his stockings are full of holes!"
But the dogs and the cats and the children
still ran up and followed him through the town
--the same as they had done when he was rich.
THE SECOND CHAPTER
ANIMAL LANGUAGE
IT happened one day that the Doctor was sitting in his kitchen talking
with the Cat's-meat-Man who had come to see him with a stomach-ache.
"Why don't you give up being a people's doctor, and be an animal-doctor?"
asked the Cat's-meat-Man.
The parrot, Polynesia, was sitting in the window
looking out at the rain and singing a sailor-song to herself.
She stopped singing and started to listen.
"You see, Doctor," the Cat's-meat-Man went
on, "you know all about animals--much more
than what these here vets do. That book you
wrote--about cats, why, it's wonderful! I can't
read or write myself--or maybe _I_'D write some
books. But my wife, Theodosia, she's a scholar,
she is. And she read your book to me. Well,
it's wonderful--that's all can be said--wonderful.
You might have been a cat yourself. You
know the way they think. And listen: you can
make a lot of money doctoring animals. Do
you know that? You see, I'd send all the old
women who had sick cats or dogs to you. And
if they didn't get sick fast enough, I could put
something in the meat I sell 'em to make 'em
sick, see?"
"Oh, no," said the Doctor quickly.
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