“To tell you who she is, my dear Mrs. Blower, is very easy,” said the officious Doctor. “She is Miss Clara Mowbray, sister to the Lord of the Manor—the gentleman who wears the green coat, with an arrow on the cape. To tell why she wears that habit, or does any thing else, would be rather beyond doctor's skill. Truth is, I have always thought she was a little—a very little—touched—call it nerves—hypochondria—or what you will.”
“Lord help us, puir thing!” said the compassionate widow.—“And troth it looks like it. But it's a shame to let her go loose, Doctor—she might hurt hersell, or somebody. See, she has ta'en the knife!—O, it's only to cut a shave of the diet-loaf. She winna let the powder-monkey of a boy help her. There's judgment in that though, Doctor, for she can cut thick or thin as she likes.—Dear me! she has not taken mair than a crumb, than ane would pit between the wires of a canary-bird's cage, after all.—I wish she would lift up that lang veil, or put off that riding-skirt, Doctor. She should really be showed the regulations, Doctor Kickelshin.”
“She cares about no rules we can make, Mrs. Blower,” said the Doctor; “and her brother's will and pleasure, and Lady Penelope's whim of indulging her, carry her through in every thing. They should take advice on her case.”
“Ay, truly, it's time to take advice, when young creatures like her caper in amang dressed leddies, just as if they were come from scampering on Leith sands.—Such a wark as my leddy makes wi' her, Doctor! Ye would think they were baith fools of a feather.”
“They might have flown on one wing, for what I know,” said Dr. Quackleben; “but there was early and sound advice taken in Lady Penelope's case. My friend, the late Earl of Featherhead, was a man of judgment—did little in his family but by rule of medicine—so that, what with the waters, and what with my own care, Lady Penelope is only freakish—fanciful—that's all—and her quality bears it out—the peccant principle might have broken out under other treatment.”
“Ay—she has been weel-friended,” said the widow; “but this bairn Mowbray, puir thing! how came she to be sae left to hersell?”
“Her mother was dead—her father thought of nothing but his sports,” said the Doctor. “Her brother was educated in England, and cared for nobody but himself, if he had been here. What education she got was at her own hand—what reading she read was in a library full of old romances—what friends or company she had was what chance sent her—then no family-physician, not even a good surgeon, within ten miles! And so you cannot wonder if the poor thing became unsettled.”
“Puir thing!—no doctor!—nor even a surgeon!—But, Doctor,” said the widow, “maybe the puir thing had the enjoyment of her health, ye ken, and, then”——
“Ah! ha, ha!—why then, madam, she needed a physician far more than if she had been delicate. A skilful physician, Mrs. Blower, knows how to bring down that robust health, which is a very alarming state of the frame when it is considered secundum artem. Most sudden deaths happen when people are in a robust state of health. Ah! that state of perfect health is what the doctor dreads most on behalf of his patient.”
“Ay, ay, Doctor?—I am quite sensible, nae doubt,” said the widow, “of the great advantage of having a skeelfu' person about ane.”