"My good nephew," replied Dr. Wilbraham quietly, "for all your fine words, if you had been in my situation you would have done just as I have done. I know you, Charles."
"Not I, i'faith," cried Dr. Butts; "I would not have budged a foot."
"What! when you saw her cast upon the world, friendless and helpless," cried the old man, "with nobody to advise her, with nobody to aid her, with nobody to console her? So sweet a girl, too! such an angel in heart, in mind, in disposition; all desolate and alone in this wide rough world! Fie, Charles, fie! you would have gone with her."
"Perhaps I might; perhaps I might," replied the physician: "however, let us now think of the best means of serving her. What can be done?"
As usual in such cases, fifty plans were propounded, which, on examination, were found to be unfeasible. "I have it!" cried Dr. Butts, at last, after discarding an infinite variety. "There was a nun's litter came up yesterday to the inn hard by; it will hold three, and you shall set off to-morrow by daybreak as nuns."
"But how?" cried Dr. Wilbraham, with horror and astonishment depicted in his face. "You don't mean me to go as a nun?"
"Faith, but I do!" replied the physician; "it would be fully as bad for you to be discovered as for Lady Constance. Now, there is no dress in the world that I know of but a nun's that will cover your face and hide your beard. Oh! you shall be a nun, by all means. I will get the three dresses this very night from a frippery in Pool Street; I will knock them up, and you shall be well shaved to-morrow morning, and will make as fine an old Sister Monica as the best of them."
Dr. Wilbraham still held out stoutly, declaring that he would not so disguise himself and disgrace his cloth on any account or consideration; nor was it till the physician showed him plainly, that by this means alone Lady Constance's safety could be ensured, that he would at all hear of the travesty thus proposed.
"Where, then, do you intend us to go?" asked Dr. Wilbraham, almost crying with vexation at the bare idea of being so metamorphosed. "I cannot, and I will not, remain long in such a dress."
"Why, you must go down to Sandwich," answered the physician. "There is a religious house there, under a sub-prioress, about a mile out of the town, looking out over the sea. I know the dame, and a little money will do much with her. Nay, look not shocked, good uncle. I mean not to say that she is wicked, and would endanger her soul's repose for mammon; but she is one of those that look leniently on small faults, and would not choke at such an innocent sin as helping you out of the cardinal's power. The time is lucky, too, for the cold wind last night has given his haughty lord cardinalship a flow of humours to the head, and he is as frightened about himself as a hen before a dray horse; so that, perhaps, he may not think of sending to Richmond so soon as he proposed.