As I did not like to call every day, for fear it should look bad, either Molly or Molly's aunt managed to feel unwell on the days that I did not call, and they found it necessary to send for me, so it came to much the same thing, as I saw Molly every day. Molly's aunt was one of that class of females who are always imagining that something or other is the matter with them. I soon saw, therefore, that to get thoroughly into her good graces, I must humour her in her whims.
Accordingly, I made out that she had this, that, or the other—indeed, I forget what it was exactly that I said ailed her—and promised to bring her some physic. This quite won her heart, so I at once set about making some liquorice water, endeavouring to disguise the taste of the liquorice as much as possible by adding salt, pepper, a little soap, some tobacco, and other nauseous ingredients. I wonder the mess didn't poison her, but so far from causing ill-effects, she informed me that it had really done her good.
Whether the good it had done her only lay in her imagination or whether the strange compound really did possess a medicinal property I cannot tell (I can hardly think the latter), but certain it was, she did seem better. I believe the real fact of the matter to be this. Molly's aunt was the daughter of a well-to-do retired butcher, and like many of her class, had over-indulged in high feeding, and consequently was always suffering from overloaded stomach. The mess that I gave her made her sick, and that, in reality, and not merely in imagination, effected a cure.
I then put her on a lower diet, recommended her plenty of walking exercise, and in a very short time there was a complete change in her constitution. She no longer felt dyspeptic and desponding, suffered no longer from nervous headaches, in fact, in her own words, she "felt quite a girl again." All the effect of my wonderful medicine. This, of course, was a feather in my cap, and she looked up to me more than ever.
A week and then a fortnight passed away, and I now thought it high time to break to the aunt my love affair with her niece, and ask her consent to our union. So I called upon her one morning and requested to speak with her alone. She received me in the back parlour, and begged me to take a seat. I did so, and began thus:—
"Ahem! Madam, I wished to talk to you upon a matter of some delicacy."
"Good gracious, doctor! What can have happened?" she exclaimed, observing a look of unwonted gravity in my face.
"Oh, nothing, nothing," I said; "at least, nothing of any great importance. Hear me. I am a physician of a certain age and in very good practice." I paused.
"Well, Dr. Crow," said the aunt.
"And I am still a bachelor," I continued.