“So am I, ma’am.”
“I go on to Plymouth,” she said. “I expect to go there myself soon,” said I.
“I am going abroad to join my husband.”
“Very strange!” said I, “and I hope to go abroad soon to join my,” (she looked at me now, with parted lips, and the first rays of a rising smile lighting up her face, expecting me to add “wife”)—“to join my ship;” and she only said “Oh!” rather disappointedly I thought, and recommenced the contemplation of the moonfaced babe.
“Bah!” thought I, “there is nothing in you but babies and matrimony;” and I threw myself on the cushions, and soon slept in earnest, and dreamt that the Director-General, in a bob-wig and drab shorts, was dancing Jacky-tar on the quarter-deck of a seventy-four, on the occasion of my being promoted to the dignity of Honorary-Surgeon to the Queen—a thing that is sure to happen some of these days.
When I awoke, cold and shivering, the sun had risen and was shining, as well as he could shine for the white mist that lay, like a veil of gauze, over all the wooded flats that skirt for many miles the great world of London. My companion was still there, and baby had woken up, too, and begun to crow, probably in imitation of the many cocks that were hallooing to each other over all the country. And now my attention was directed, in fact riveted, to a very curious pantomime which was being performed by the young lady; I had seen the like before, and often have since, but never could solve the mystery. Her eyes were fixed on baby, whose eyes in turn were fastened on her, and she was bobbing her head up and down on the perpendicular, like a wax figure or automaton; every time that she elevated she pronounced the letter “a,” and as her head again fell she remarked “gue,” thus completing the word “ague,” much to the delight of little moonface, and no doubt to her own entire satisfaction. “A-gue! a-gue!”
Well, it certainly was a morning to give any one ague, so, pulling out my brandy-flask, I made bold to present it to her. “You seem cold, ma’am,” said I; “will you permit me to offer you a very little brandy?”
“Oh dear, no! thanks,” she answered quickly.
“For baby’s sake, ma’am,” I pleaded; “I am a doctor.”
“Well, then,” she replied, smiling, “just a tiny little drop. Oh dear! not so much!”