"What then is the matter with you?" he exclaimed.
"Oh, my appetite! I have not relished a spoonful of soup these two days. And then my head aches as if it would burst."
"Something you have eaten has, perhaps, disagreed with you, aunt; some philosophical pâté de foie gras may be in fault."
"Gracious Heaven! no, Falcon, the stomach cannot be in fault. I live so simply, so frugally. Seriously, I don't think I have for several weeks eaten anything likely to disagree with me. But sometimes I have a tooth-ache, sometimes qualmishness, heartburn, vomitings—Good Heavens! do look at me, Falcon, and don't keep drumming upon the table so; look how pale I am,—how my eyes are sunk in my head: oh dear! I am certainly very unwell."
"Well, what do I care?" said the doctor in a peevish tone: his mind entirely occupied by the condition of his Susan: "you're in the family way, that's all."
"Merciful Heaven!" screamed the chaste virgin, in a voice that might have been heard three streets off. Merciful Heaven! that would be a blue wonder indeed!"
A cold sweat came over the doctor as he heard these animated tones from the maiden lips of Miss Sarah Bugle. He immediately recollected that, what with ill-humour, and what with absence of mind, he had been betrayed into a superlatively foolish speech, and one that no chaste virgin was ever likely to forgive; particularly a maid who had triumphantly preserved her painful dignity unimpaired to her fiftieth year; one who never pardoned in another damsel even a gentle pressure of the hand; one who was neither more nor less than an immaculate personification of purity and sanctity; one who was, in short, that virgin of virgins, Miss Sarah Bugle!
"I will let the storm vent itself, and seek safety in flight, before the neighbours come pouring in, to see what's the matter," thought the terrified doctor, as he opened the door and rushed into the street.
ANOTHER BLUE WONDER.
The other three faculties had by this time, by their jealousy, rapacity, and endless misrepresentations concerning each other, utterly ruined themselves in the good opinion of the virgin. Doctor Falcon was the only one who at all bore up against the sudden storm. He could not, for the soul of him, help laughing at his own blunder. Susan, however, on the following day began to reprove her husband's levity, though she had at first joined in the laugh at his thoughtlessness. He caught her in his arms, stopped her mouth with his kisses, and said, "You are right: I ought not to have so rudely assaulted the maiden purity of the heaven-devoted vestal. But, faith! when I left you yesterday, I scarcely knew myself which way my head was turned."