The Missing Link | Page 4

He was waited upon by a rather nice-looking girl of
twenty.
"This is him, Millie," said the farmer, with enthusiasm. "This is Dr.
Crips what cured yer old dad. Gord bless you, sir."
The girl shook Nickie by the hand, and smiled on him sweetly, and said
she could never forget the man that cured her dear pa, and all Nickie's
happiness and his great content came back to him like refreshing waters.
Dr. Crips stood up straight, he shook hands enthusiastically with farmer
Dickson.

"So the Rheumatic Balm has set you up again?" he said, heartily.
"Hasn't it, by gum! Look at this." The farmer capered about the room.
"Every bit o' pain's gone. I'll buy every drop of that balm you've got.
That's why I had you brought back. But sit down, and eat, man--eat!"
They simply squandered hospitality on Nickie the Kid that night; they
had neighbours in to see him; they had music, and Dr. Crips sang, and
danced, and drank, and made love to Miss Dickson out under the
elderberries. Out under the elderberries, for the edification of Millie
Dickson, Nicholas Crips was a medical man of high attainments, but
the victim of extraordinary vicissitudes. It was very touching, most
romantic. Nickie lied with great splendour. He displayed no little
aptitude in the character of Don Juan too. Miss Dickson thought him a
perfect dear.
Returning to the house for supper, Nickie and the ingenuous Millie
loitered by the open kitchen window, and Nickie saw and heard things
of no little interest to him professionally. Farmer Dickson and three
neighbours were comparing bottles of Dr. Crip's Celebrated Healing
Mixture.
"Anyhow," said one, "I'll swear his nibs sold me this ez a cure fer pip in
chickens."
"And he told me this was a dead sure cure fer corns 'n' ingrowin'
toe-nail," ejaculated another.
"I bought this bottle fer me diabetes," explained Coleman. "He said it
ud root out diabetes in nine hours."
Farmer Dickson shook his bottle, and looked at it very dubiously. "It
seems t' me it's all the same mixture," he said. "It looks like it, tastes
like, 'n' it smells like. Now I come t' think iv it, I ain't too sure 'bout
these blanky rheumatics o' mine." He reached down his back and
rubbed himself anxiously.
"I thought my diabetes was a-movin', but they're all back at me agin,"

said Coleman.
"The chicken died what I gave the mixture to," explained Anderson.
Dickson scowled and felt himself, for as far as he could reach up and
down his spine. "I'm pretty certain the rheumatics 're comin' back," he
murmured. "Wow!" he gasped, as a bad twinge took him. "It is back!"
"Tell yeh what," Anderson remarked plaintively, "we've been done."
"He's a blanky fraud!"
"A robber!"
"Let's look him up, 'n' 'ave a word or two."
The farmers seized their sticks. They moved towards the door, but
already Nickie had begged to be excused, and passed into the night.
The stillness and mystery of the bush enveloped him.
Next day the neighbours compared notes and bottles, and found that the
medicine for influenza, consumption, liver disease, indigestion and
cold feet, the embrocation for rheumatism, sprains, corns, bruises and
headaches, the cure for pigs, the wash for silvering spoons, and the
hair-restorer were all the same mixture. Then a great popular demand
for Dr. Crips set in at Tarra, but by this time Nickie the Kid was back in
town, amazing his friends with his lavish hospitality in threepenny bars.
CHAPTER II.
A FAMILY MATTER.
EVEN Nickie's intimates of the wharves and the river banks knew
nothing of his ancestors or relations. Nickie was naturally reticent
about his own business; On the point of family connections he was
dumb. It was assumed that he had had a father and mother at some
stage of his career, but the evolution of Nickie the Kid from a
schoolboy, with shining morning face, to a homeless rapscallion, living

on his impudence, was never dwelt upon by our hero, which is a great
pity, as the process of degeneration must have been highly interesting.
Certainly, Nickie did not regret his respectable past, if he were ever
respectable, and it is equally certain that he had no craving for high
things in the way of tall hats and two-storey houses. He appreciated the
value of money, since it enabled him to gratify his tastes, but it must be
admitted his tastes were scandalous in the main.
However, at Banklands Nickie solicited work, laborious and painful
work. Moreover, he went to the job of his own free will, when sober
and in his right mind. This seemed to imply an awakening of
conscience, a dawning sense of his utter uselessness to the body politic,
and a desire to figure as a