第25章
"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 Iwas 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 passed 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 shores."** 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 pashint 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 passions 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' absence of all physical cause: then why make this healthy pashint's buddy a test-tube for poisons? Sovereign drugs (I deal with no other, I leave the nullities to the noodles) are either counterpoisons or poisons, and here there is nothing to counterpoison at prisent. So I'm for caushin, and working on the safe side th' hidge, till we are less in the dark. Mind ye, young women at her age are kittle cattle; they have gusts o' this, and gusts o'
that, th' unreasonable imps. D'ye see these two pieces pasteboard? They are tickets for a ball, In Barkton town-hall.""Yes, of course I see them," said Mrs. Dodd dolefully.
"Well, I prescribe 'em. And when they have been taken, And the pashint well shaken, perhaps we shall see whether we are on the right system: and if so, we'll dose her with youthful society in a more irrashinal form; conversaziones, cookeyshines, et citera. And if we find ourselves on the wrong _tack_ why then we'll hark _back._Stick blindly to 'a course,' the Dockers cry.
But it does me harm: _Then_ 'twill do good _by-and-bye._Where lairned ye that, Echoes of Echoes, say!