‘Mary and I have been quarrelling,’ said Patience.  ’She says the doctor is the greatest man in a village; and I say the parson is of course.’

‘I only say that the doctor is the most looked after,’ said Mary.  ’There’s another horrid message for you to go to Silverbridge, uncle.  Why can’t that Dr Century manage his own people?’

‘She says,’ continued Miss Oriel, ’that if a parson was away for a month, no one would miss him; but that a doctor is so precious that his very minutes are counted.’

’I am sure uncle’s are.  They begrudge him his meals.  Mr Oriel never gets called away to Silverbridge.’

’No; we in the Church manage our parish arrangements better than you do.  We don’t let strange practitioners in among our flocks because the sheep may chance to fancy them.  Our sheep have to put up with our spiritual doses whether they like them or not.  In that respect we are much the best off.  I advise you, Mary, to marry a clergyman, by all means.’

‘I will when you marry a doctor,’ said she.

‘I am sure nothing on earth would give me greater pleasure,’ said Miss Oriel, getting up and curtseying very low to Dr Thorne; ’but I am not quite prepared for the agitation of an offer this morning, so I’ll run away.’

And so she went; and the doctor, getting to his other horse, started again for Silverbridge, wearily enough.  ’She’s happy now where she is,’ said he to himself, as he rode along.  ’They all treat her there as an equal at Greshamsbury.  What though she be no cousin to the Thornes of Ullathorne.  She has found her place there among them all, and keeps it on equal terms with the best of them.  There is Miss Oriel; her family is high; she is rich, fashionable, a beauty, courted by every one; but yet she does not look down on Mary.  They are equal friends together.  But how would it be if she were taken to Boxall Hill, even as a recognized niece of the rich man there?  Would Patience Oriel and Beatrice Gresham go there after her?  Could she be happy there as she is in my house here, poor though it be?  It would kill her to pass a month with Lady Scatcherd and put up with that man’s humours, to see his mode of life, to be dependent on him, to belong to him.’  And then the doctor, hurrying on to Silverbridge, again met Dr Century at the old lady’s bedside, and having made his endeavours to stave off the inexorable coming of the grim visitor, again returned to his own niece and his own drawing-room.

‘You must be dead, uncle,’ said Mary, as she poured out his tea for him, and prepared the comforts of that most comfortable meal-tea, dinner, and supper, all in one.  ’I wish Silverbridge was fifty miles off.’

’That would only make the journey worse; but I am not dead yet, and, what is more to the purpose, neither is my patient.’  And as he spoke he contrived to swallow a jorum of scalding tea, containing in measure somewhat near a pint.  Mary, not a whit amazed at this feat, merely refilled the jorum without any observation; and the doctor went on stirring the mixture with his spoon, evidently oblivious that any ceremony had been performed by either of them since the first supply had been administered to him.