"Why, what can you have done to the poor child?" Fanny inquired.
"I merely administered one of Inglish's excellent aperient Scott's pills to the dear infant," Paragon replied, calmly.
"That perfectly accounts for all these cries," Fanny observed, and further declared that she had herself been put in perfect torture by the only one she had ever swallowed.
"Do you presume to judge of Inglish's Aperient, who have swallowed but one?" said Paragon, with dignified contempt; "why, it requires at least fifty boxes of it to pass downwards before you can properly decide on the merits of this invaluable medicine! In the meantime, the bowels must be severely pinched into obedience. Everything depends on the force of habit. Now there is my little Mary for instance; the dear little child has become so accustomed to a pain in her bowels that, if by any accident I put her to bed without a Scotchman, she always awakes in low spirits."
"Nevertheless, you must excuse my ever swallowing another to the end of my natural life," said Fanny.
Paragon advised her to make her will, assuring her her that she would answer for the life of no person who had not learned by habit to digest a Scotchman. "Read what King Charles said of them," continued Paragon; but Fanny declared that not even King George himself, with the opinions of all the Spartans and philosophers to boot, should make her believe that pain was no evil, however people might be accustomed to it.
From Paragon's we drove to Julia's. She told us that she had made Lord Berwick pay her down several hundred pounds in ready money, for having interceded with Sophia and persuaded her to live with him.
"Well," said I, sighing, "you have a large family, and, I suppose, it is what we must all come to. However, I conceive myself, as yet, rather too young to take up this new profession of yours, Julia."
Julia defended her conduct, by assuring me she had not taken it up but for my sister's real interest: as a proof of which she declared that she had strong reason to believe it was Lord Berwick's intention to marry Sophia.