"Have you had any advice at Salisbury? Have you been under any medical treatment?"
"O yes; yes, sir; Doctor Crosse has attended me for the last twelve months. He treats my case as one of decline, or consumption. I was once as robust as you are, Doctor; but I have wasted away to a shadow within the space of one year."
"Pray, sir, are you a married man?"
"No-o-o! No-o-o! Not exactly that, but I am an engaged man. They do tell me, I must be in better health before I marry; and that makes me very, very anxious to get better. They will scarcely allow the slightest breath of wind to blow upon me; no air, no exercise, no window down, no curtain undrawn, one even temperature,—and nothing must disturb me. Oh! Doctor, I fear I never shall marry. My intended is very careful over me. She has come up, all the way to town with me, as my nurse; and is now in my carriage at your door."
"Dear me, sir! why did you not tell me this before? It is actually necessary that I should see your good nurse, and have a few minutes' conversation with her. I am so glad you have brought her; it gives me the greatest hope that I may be able to effect a cure."
The Doctor rang the bell. "Samuel, request the lady in the carriage to step into the house. Show her into the drawing-room. With your permission, Sir Nicholas, I will speak to her myself concerning your treatment?"
The Doctor was expecting to see an elegant, lady-like woman, something slender, and answering to the attenuated gentility of the being in whom "hope deferred, evidently made the heart sick."
What was his astonishment when he beheld a blooming, buxom, short, fat, merry-looking lass! with a face that sorrow seemed never to have smitten. She wore a large hat and feathers; such a profusion of rich brown hair, sweeping down her back, as would have made the Lord Chancellor the finest wig in the land.
It is needless to relate the conversation. The Doctor soon found that she was desirous of becoming Lady Nicholas Skinner, and very soon settled the matter with great adroitness.
"He must ride on horseback! You must make him do so. There is nothing the matter with him, but over anxiety to be better; and it is all in your hands. You, and you only, have the power of making him better."