Part 11 (1/2)

She sighed, and Sampson generalised; he plunged from the seaside novel into the sea of fiction. He rechristened that joyous art f.e.c.ks.h.i.+n, and lashed its living professors. ”You devour their three volumes greedily,”

said he, ”but after your meal you feel as empty as a drum; there is no leading idea in 'um; now there always is--in Moliere; and _he_ comprehended the midicine of his age. But what fundamental truth d'our novelists iver convey? All they can do is pile incidents. Their customers dictate th' article: unideaed melodrams for unideaed girls.

The writers and their f.e.c.ks.h.i.+ns belong to one species, and that's 'the non-vertebrated animals;' and their midicine is Bosh; why, they bleed still for falls and fevers; and niver mention vital chronometry. Then they don't look straight at Nature, but see with their ears, and repeat one another twelve deep. Now, listen me! there are the cracters for an 'ideaed f.e.c.ks.h.i.+n' in Barkington, and I'd write it, too, only I haven't time.”

At this, Julia, forgetting her resolution, broke out, ”Romantic characters in Barkington? Who? who?”

”Who _should_ they be, but my pas.h.i.+nts? Ay, ye may lauch, Miss Julee, but wait till ye see them.” He was then seized with a fit of candour, and admitted that some, even of his pas.h.i.+nts, were colourless; indeed, not to mince the matter, six or seven of that sacred band were nullity in person. ”I can compare the beggars to nothing,” said he, ”but the globules of the Do-Nothings; dee----d insipid, and nothing in 'em. But the others make up. Man alive, I've got 'a rosy-cheeked miser,' and an 'ill-used attorney,' and an 'honest Screw'--he is a gardener, with a head like a cart-horse.”

”Mamma! mamma! that is Mr. Maxley,” cried Julia, clapping her hands, and thawing in her own despite.

”Then there's my virgin martyr and my puppy. They are brother and sister; and there's their father, but he is an impenetrable dog--won't unbosom. Howiver, he sairves to draw chicks for the other two, and so keep 'em goen. By-the-bye, you know my puppy?”

”We have not that honour. Do we know Dr. Sampson's puppy, love?”

inquired Mrs. Dodd, rather languidly.

”Mamma!--I--I--know no one of that name.”

”Don't tell me! Why it was he sent me here told me where you lived, and I was to make haste, for Miss Dodd was very ill: it is young Hardie, the banker's son, ye know.”

Mrs. Dodd said good-humouredly, but with a very slight touch of irony, that really they were very much flattered by the interest Mr. Alfred Hardie had shown; especially as her daughter had never exchanged ten words with him. Julia coloured at this statement, the accuracy of which she had good reason to doubt; and the poor girl felt as if an icicle pa.s.sed swiftly along her back. And then, for the first the in her life, she thought her mother hardly gracious; and she wanted to say _she_ was obliged to Mr. Alfred Hardie, but dared not, and despised herself for not daring. Her composure was further attacked by Mrs. Dodd looking full at her, and saying interrogatively, ”I wonder how that young gentleman could know about your being ill?”

At this Julia eyed her plate very attentively, and murmured, ”I believe it is all over the town: and seriously too; so Mrs. Maxley says, for she tells me that in Barkington if more than one doctor is sent for, that bodes ill for the patient.”

”Deevelich ill,” cried Sampson heartily.

”For two physicians, like a pair of oars, Conduck him faster to the Styjjin sh.o.r.es.”*

* Garth.

Julia looked him in the face, and coldly ignored this perversion of Mrs.

Maxley's meaning; and Mrs. Dodd returned pertinaciously to the previous topic. ”Mr. Alfred Hardie interests me; he was good to Edward. I am curious to know why you call him a puppy?”

”Only because he is one, ma'am. And that is no reason at all with 'the Six.' He is a juveneel pidant and a puppy, and contradicts ivery new truth, bekase it isn't in Aristotle and th' Eton Grammar; and he's such a chatterbox, ye can't get in a word idgeways; and he and his sister--that's my virgin martyr--are a farce. _He_ keeps sneerin' at her relijjin, and that puts _her_ in such a rage, she threatens 't'

intercede for him at the throne.”

”Jargon,” sighed Mrs. Dodd, and just shrugged her lovely shoulders. ”We breathe it--we float in an atmosphere of it. My love?” And she floated out of the room, and Julia floated after.

Sampson sat meditating on the gullibility of man in matters medical.

This favourite speculation detained him late, and almost his first word on entering the drawing-room was, ”Good night, little girl.”

Julia coloured at this broad hint, drew herself up, and lighted a bedcandle. She went to Mrs. Dodd, kissed her, and whispered in her ear, ”I hate him!” and, as she retired, her whole elegant person launched ladylike defiance; under which brave exterior no little uneasiness was hidden. ”Oh, what will become of me!” thought she, ”if _he_ has gone and told him about Henley?”

”Let's see the prescriptions, ma'am,” said Dr. Sampson.

Delighted at this concession, Mrs. Dodd took them out of her desk and spread them earnestly. He ran his eye over them, and pointed out that the mucous-membrane man and the nerve man had prescribed the same medicine, on irreconcilable grounds; and a medicine, moreover, whose effect on the nerves was _nil,_ and on the mucous membrane was not to soothe it, but plough it and harrow it; ”and did not that open her eyes?” He then reminded her that all these doctors in consultation would have contrived to agree. ”But you,” said he, ”have baffled the collusive hoax by which Dox arrived at a sham uniformity--honest uniformity can never exist till scientific principles obtain. Listme! To begin, is the pas.h.i.+nt in love?”

The doctor put this query in just the same tone in which they inquire ”Any expectoration?” But Mrs. Dodd, in reply, was less dry and business-like. She started and looked aghast. This possibility had once, for a moment, occurred to her, but only to be rejected, the evidence being all against it.

”In love?” said she. ”That child, and I not know it!”

He said he had never supposed that. ”But I thought I'd just ask ye; for she has no bodily ailment, and the pa.s.sions are all counterfeit diseases; they are connected, like all diseases, with cerebral instability, have their hearts and chills like all diseases, and their paroxysms and remissions like all diseases. Nlistme! You have detected the signs of a slight cerebral instability; I have ascertained th'