The Story of Doctor Dolittle | Page 5

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.

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. "You mustn't do that. That wouldn't be right."
"Oh, I didn't mean real sick," answered the Cat's-meat-Man. "Just a little something to make them droopy-like was what I had reference to. But as you say, maybe it ain't quite fair on the animals. But they'll get sick anyway, because the old women always give 'em too much to eat. And look, all the farmers 'round about who had lame horses and weak lambs-- they'd come. Be an animal-doctor."
When the Cat's-meat-Man had gone the parrot flew off the window on to the Doctor's table and said,
"That man's got sense. That's what you ought to do. Be an animal-doctor. Give the silly people up--if they haven't brains enough to see you're the best doctor in the world. Take care of animals instead--THEY'll soon find it out. Be an animal-doctor."
"Oh, there are plenty of animal-doctors," said John Dolittle, putting the flower-pots outside on the window-sill to get the rain.
"Yes, there ARE plenty," said Polynesia. "But none of them are any good at all. Now listen, Doctor, and I'll tell you something. Did you know that animals can talk?"
"I knew that parrots can talk," said the Doctor.
"Oh, we parrots can talk in two languages-- people's language and bird-language," said Polynesia proudly. "If I say, `Polly wants a cracker,' you understand me. But hear this: Ka-ka oi-ee, fee-fee?"
"Good Gracious!" cried the Doctor. "What does that mean?"
"That means, `Is the porridge hot yet?'--in bird-language."
"My! You don't say so!" said the Doctor. "You never talked that way to me before."
"What would have been the good?" said Polynesia, dusting some cracker-crumbs off her left wing. "You wouldn't have understood me if I had."
"Tell me some more," said the Doctor, all excited; and he rushed over to the dresser-drawer and came back with the butcher's book and a pencil. "Now don't go too fast--and I'll write it down. This