“Heard? Of course. Doctors hear and know everything. Parson’s nowhere beside a doctor. People don’t tell the parson all the truth: they always keep a little bit back. They tell the doctor all because they know he can see right through them. Lie still, stupid. Ha! he’s calming down.”
“Isn’t he worse, Stonor?” asked Sir Humphrey.
“No; not a bit. And as I was saying, if, when he gets on his legs again, he dares to say a word against his wife, knock him down. I’ll make him so weak it will be quite easy.”
“Well, he deserves it,” said Dick.
“Of course he does. So do you, for thinking ill of your sister. I’ll be bound to say, if you sent to Wimpole Street, you’d find the poor girls there soaking pocket-handkerchiefs.”
“By Jove! yes,” cried Dick, starting at the doctor’s suggestion. “Why, of course. Doctor, you’ve hit it! Depend upon it, they’re gone to Uncle Robert’s, father.”
“Think so, my boy, eh?—think so?” said the old gentleman. “It would be very dull and gloomy.”
“Nonsense!” said the doctor. “My dear boy, the more I think of it, the more likely it seems to me that they have gone there.”
“Yes; that’s it, doctor. Guv’nor, I don’t like to be hard on you, but the doctor’s a very old friend. It’s a nice thing—isn’t it?—that our girls should have to go to Uncle Robert’s for the protection they cannot find here?”
“Yes, my dear boy, it is, it is,” said the old man querulously; “but I can’t help it. Her ladyship took the reins as soon as we were married, and she’s held them very tightly ever since.”