"No time for this sort of thing now," she said, as well as her flurried condition would permit; and then she pulled her brother in, and sent Frank, who was wonderfully calm and reasonable, to fetch that other doctor too. Her brother was not in a nice frame of mind, according to her recollection; and there was no time to reason with him, if he chose to be so stupid. Therefore she sent him where he was wanted; and of course no doctor could refuse to go, under such frightful circumstances. But as for herself, she felt as if it mattered very little what she did; and so she went and sat somewhere in the dark, without even a dog for company, and finished with many pathetic addenda the good cry that had been broken off.
CHAPTER XXIII. A MAGIC LETTER.
"Oh here you are at last then, are you?" said somebody entering the room with a light, by the time the young lady had wept herself dry, and was beginning to feel hungry; "what made you come here? I thought you were gone. To me it is a surprising thing, that you have the assurance to stay in this house."
"Oh, Jemmy, how can you be so cruel, when every bit of it was for you?"
"For me indeed! I am very much obliged. For your own temper, I should say. Old Webber says that if she dies, there may be a verdict of manslaughter."
"I don't care two pins, if there is; when all the world is so unjust to me. But how is she, Jemmy? What has happened to her? What on earth is it all about?"
"Well, I think you ought to know that best. Webber says he never heard any one like you, in all his experience of Criminal Courts."
"Much I care what he says—the old dodderer! You should have seen him hopping about the room, like a frog with the rheumatism. You should have seen him stare, when the bell-rope fell. When I said the poor thing's hands were cold, he ran and poked the fire with his spectacles. But can't you tell me how she is? Surely I have a right to know, if I am to be manslaughtered."
"Well," replied Dr. Fox, with that heavy professional nod which he ridiculed in others; "she is in a very peculiar state. No one can tell what may come of it."