"dolit10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lofting Hugh)

come and see you when you keep all these animals
in the house? It's a fine doctor would have
his parlor full of hedgehogs and mice! That's
the fourth personage these animals have driven
away. Squire Jenkins and the Parson say they
wouldn't come near your house again--no matter
how sick they are. We are getting poorer
every day. If you go on like this, none of the
best people will have you for a doctor."

"But I like the animals better than the `best
people'," said the Doctor.

"You are ridiculous," said his sister, and
walked out of the room.

So, as time went on, the Doctor got more and
more animals; and the people who came to see
him got less and less. Till at last he had no one
left--except the Cat's-meat-Man, who didn't
mind any kind of animals. But the Cat's-meat
Man wasn't very rich and he only got sick once
a year--at Christmas-time, when he used to give
the Doctor sixpence for a bottle of medicine.

Sixpence a year wasn't enough to live on--
even in those days, long ago; and if the Doctor
hadn't had some money saved up in his money-
box, no one knows what would have happened.

And he kept on getting still more pets; and of
course it cost a lot to feed them. And the money
he had saved up grew littler and littler.

Then he sold his piano, and let the mice live
in a bureau-drawer. But the money he got for
that too began to go, so he sold the brown suit
he wore on Sundays and went on becoming
poorer and poorer.

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.