“You are feeling tolerably well just now, I think,” he said; “your color is better than when you came in the morning.”
“Oh yes! much better just now! But how charming your garden is! I do not wonder that you make a pet of it. We too have a few square inches of garden, but it gives me but little pleasure, because I have never done any thing to it myself. I think I shall get a trowel of my own.”
“You delight me! You have only to cultivate and bring to perfection a single bed of carnations, to become as great an enthusiast as myself. But it must be done by your own hands—”
“Yes, certainly; but now I must be gone. To-morrow I will hold myself in readiness to call on your friends at any hour you will appoint.”
“What say you to eleven? Would that be too barbarous? The air is worth a good deal more at eleven than at one.”
“At seven, if you like! Do not imagine me so very a slave to absurd fashions! I am determined you shall own me a reasonable woman yet.”
Mrs. Waldorf called from the carriage window—“You’ll not forget to send the medicine, doctor?”
“Certainly not! you shall have it at seven this evening, and I trust you will take it with exact regularity.”
“Do not fear me,” she said, and the doctor made his bow of adieu.
The medicine came at seven, with a sediment which looked not a little like grated potato, and without the slightest disagreeable taste. Accompanying directions required the disuse, for the present, of coffee and green tea; and recommended to Mrs. Waldorf a daily walk and a very early bed-hour.