"Mary Kirchoff. Kendermore ("Dragonlance Preludes I" #2) (angl)" - читать интересную книгу автора

ear and shouted, "Keep them in for two weeks!" Semus smiled.

"Thanks, Dr. Ears," he shouted. "Can you hear me OK?"

"Fine, fine," said Phineas, ushering the beaming kender out of
the chair and steering him back through the waiting room. "That'll be
ten copper," the doctor said, holding his hand out for payment.

The kender patted his pockets, then reached in and pulled out a
fistful of sticky candy. "I seem to be a little short today. Could you
maybe use some scrap wood?

You could fix up this dump real nice, add a few more shelves,
you know -"

"No, thank you," Phineas said, snatching the plugs from the
startled kender's ears and booting him out of the door into the
cobbled street. The balding, middleaged human dusted off his hands,
scratched his redveined nose, and turned to the waiting throng. Ten
kender were seated on the long wooden bench that ran along the north
wall of the office.

For a year and a half Phineas Curick had been practicing his
peculiar brand of medicine in Kendermore. And if he lived to be one
hundred years of age, he thought, he would never understand kender.
Day after day they crowded into his front office with their aches and
pains and imaginary ills, and day after day he dispensed sugar pills,
beeswax, curdled milk, and mustard to his faithful patients. The only
real medical procedure he knew was pulling teeth, and there was some
call for that, too.

To kender with toothaches he was Dr. Teeth.

To those with ear problems, Dr. Ears. If someone's joints hurt,
Dr. Bones. No ailment was too acute or too minor.

"Who's next?" All ten of the seated kender jumped to their feet
- or tried to. Only one stood up and strolled confidently into the
examination room. The other nine flew to the floor, arms and legs
akimbo, shoelaces mysteriously tied to their chairs. Phineas had seen
many things in his kender-filled waiting room. Most of his patients
with genuine ailments received them in his office. Fights broke out
regularly - he made a lot of money off those, removing broken teeth
and plugging bloody noses - but he admired this particular kender's
ingenuity.

Stepping gingerly through the thrashing, flopping bodies and
dodging their famous kender taunts, Phineas followed his next patient
into the examination room.