THE BLUE WONDER.
He took up his hat, but he did not run. The little domestic dialogue still weighed on his spirits. He thought only of the small number of his patients, and the exhausted state of his exchequer. He drew his hat over his brow, and looked straight before him like a rhymester: on his way he saluted neither right nor left, and had nearly run down the superintendent-general,—a man looked upon by most people as one of the brightest shining lights in the church.
When he arrived at his dearly-beloved aunt's, he did not, indeed, find her on her death-bed; but she had mounted her spectacles, and was seated before a large book, from which she had opened at Reflections on Death, and from which she was devoutly reading sundry Prayers for the Dying. She looked wretchedly; but it would have been difficult to say when her face looked anything else. Round her head she had tied one handkerchief; and another, which passed over her head, was fastened under her chin.
"What is the matter with you?" asked the learned Doctor Falcon, as he laid his hat and stick aside.
"The Lord knows," sighed Miss Bugle in a soft and plaintive tone; "I have suffered much for several days. I feel as if my hour were come; and that would be terrible."
The doctor thoughtfully felt her pulse, and said unconsciously, half to himself, "It fills, with a vengeance!" All the good man's thoughts were at home with Susan.
"I thought as much," sighed the terrified virgin. "Do you think there is danger, my dear Falcon?"
"Not at your years," replied the doctor, scarcely knowing what he said.
"Well, that is some consolation," replied the lady in a more cheerful tone; "in fact, I am in my best years; my strength unbroken. My constitution must bring me through. Don't you think so, dear Falcon? Only, no expensive medicines, if they can be done without. Since bark, rhubarb, and mixtures have been turned into colonial produce, there's no enduring them. The Lord be merciful to us! but really, my dear Falcon, I am not at all well."
Our worthy aunt now gave the reins to her tongue; spoke, as she was wont to do, of a thousand different things, none of them in any way connected with her indisposition. The doctor, meanwhile, hummed a tune, and beat the devil's tattoo upon the table, without listening to a word of what the good lady was saying. At length he was beginning to lose patience.