There is no fear that Raleigh Gilmore will ever inherit Fairvale now, for Countess Vera has two lovely children—a dark-eyed boy and blue-eyed girl—who are as beautiful, as healthy and brilliant as their parents' hearts could wish. Countess Vera calls them Lawrence and Edith, in loving memory of the dead.
[THE END.]
[THE MYSTERIOUS BEAUTY.]
Of course I was "altogether out of sorts," and "worry had told upon me." There was no need of young Hunter, fresh from English and foreign hospitals, with all the latest scientific discoveries and the longest scientific terms at his fingers' ends, to inform me of that little fact; my own common sense could arrive at that conclusion unassisted. What did puzzle me about it was the connection between mind and matter; why a mental anxiety resulted in a shooting pain, and why the annoyance I had lately undergone should have a tendency to develop bunions. Hunter laughed when I asked him the reason of this, and then he said:
"If I were you, Mr. Slocombe, I would just run up to town one day and see Sir Percival Pylle; he is quite at the top of the profession for a case like yours, and I should feel more satisfied in treating you afterward when you have had his opinion."
The young man spoke modestly enough—more so than these overtaught young gentlemen of the present day are in the habit of doing—but there was a laugh in his eye all the time, and I have since led him to confess that he did not believe he should ever get me to submit to his orders unless some medical Colossus had first laid down the law in the same direction.
It was a great loss to this neighborhood when good old Dr. Manners died. We all knew and believed in him; he had vaccinated the last three generations, helped them through croup and measles, had lanced their babies' gums, and attended the funerals of at least half the parish twice over; and now that he was gone we none of us had the least idea how to be ill without him. Young Mr. Hunter had been with Dr. Manners for a short time before his death; but what are a few months' experience compared to that of the man who has known and physicked you from the day of your birth? So there was a little division of feeling about Hunter; the young folks, who could not be expected to have old heads on their shoulders, extolled his cleverness and skill; but we elders did not commit ourselves so unreservedly, and there was a tacit agreement amongst us that in case we had to call in the new doctor, it would be well not to trust him too fully as to our ailments, confiding to his ear such symptoms merely as we thought him capable of understanding, and reserving to ourselves our own opinions, while we took those he expressed cum grano.