He gave her back her hand, as it were, so gently did
he let it go, and said:
“I will send you something as soon as I get
home, to take at once. I presume you will go
to bed soon?”
“I will, if you think it best.”
And so Mr. Henry Armstrong was, without more ado,
tacitly installed as physician to Miss Adela Cathcart;
and she seemed quite content with the new arrangement.
The bell.
Before the next meeting took place, namely, after
breakfast on the following morning, Percy having gone
to visit the dogs, Mrs. Cathcart addressed me:
“I had something to say to my brother, Mr. Smith,
but—”
“And you wish to be alone with him? With
all my heart,” I said.
“Not at all, Mr. Smith,” she answered,
with one of her smiles, which were quite incomprehensible
to me, until I hit upon the theory that she kept a
stock of them for general use, as stingy old ladies
keep up their half worn ribbons to make presents of
to servant-maids; “I only wanted to know, before
I made a remark to the colonel, whether Dr. Armstrong—”
“Mr. Armstrong lays no claim to the rank of
a physician.”
“So much the better for my argument. But
is he a friend of yours, Mr. Smith?”
“Yes—of nearly a week’s standing.”
“Oh, then, I am in no danger of hurting your
feelings.”
“I don’t know that,” thought I,
but I did not say it.
“Well, Colonel Cathcart—excuse the
liberty I am taking—but surely you do not
mean to dismiss Dr. Wade, and give a young man like
that the charge of your daughter’s health at
such a crisis.”
“Dr. Wade is dismissed already, Jane. He
did her no more good than any old woman might have
done.”
“But such a young man!”
“Not so very young,” I ventured to say.
“He is thirty at least.”
But the colonel was angry with her interference; for,
an impetuous man always, he had become irritable of
late.
“Jane,” he said, “is a man less
likely to be delicate because he is young? Or
does a man always become more refined as he grows older?
For my part—” and here his opposition
to his unpleasant sister-in-law possibly made him
say more than he would otherwise have conceded—“I
have never seen a young man whose manners and behaviour
I liked better.”
“Much good that will do her! It will only
hasten the mischief. You men are so slow to take
a hint, brother; and it is really too hard to be forced
to explain one’s self always. Don’t
you see that, whether he cures her or not, he will
make her fall in love with him? And you won’t
relish that, I fancy.”
