"Well, then, I'm sure."
"She's had it afore, you know," Ann Packet suggested, "when she was a child. I thought people couldn't have these nasty things twice."
"Oh! yes."
"That's enough, then," said Ann Packet, taking off her bonnet and shawl, and putting them on the table as centre ornaments; "here I sticks till you're better."
"Ann—Ann Packet!" cried Mattie.
"Ah! you may say what you like, I shan't move. When this gentleman's gone, we'll quarrel about it—not afore."
The gentleman alluded to took his departure, promising to send round some medicine in a few minutes. Mattie looked imploringly at the obdurate Ann.
"You must go home, Ann."
"Not a bit of it, my dear," said Ann; "I have knowed you for too long a time to leave you in the lurch like this, for all the places in the world. And it isn't that I haven't knowed the Hinchfords long enough, to think they'll mind."
Mattie sighed.