‘You have seen the gentleman in this way before, miss? Is he used to these attacks?’
‘I have seen him very ill before, but not so ill as he has been tonight.’
‘What a Providence!’ said the landlady of the Dragon, ‘that you had the prescriptions and the medicines with you, miss!’
‘They are intended for such an emergency. We never travel without them.’
‘Oh!’ thought the hostess, ‘then we are in the habit of travelling, and of travelling together.’
She was so conscious of expressing this in her face, that meeting the young lady’s eyes immediately afterwards, and being a very honest hostess, she was rather confused.
‘The gentleman—your grandpapa’—she resumed, after a short pause, ‘being so bent on having no assistance, must terrify you very much, miss?’
‘I have been very much alarmed to-night. He—he is not my grandfather.’
‘Father, I should have said,’ returned the hostess, sensible of having made an awkward mistake.
‘Nor my father’ said the young lady. ‘Nor,’ she added, slightly smiling with a quick perception of what the landlady was going to add, ‘Nor my uncle. We are not related.’