"'Never mind about dem Noirve Beans for de dime bein',' 'e seth. 'You ain'd so bad enough, in der meandime,' he seth. 'Ve'll try der duckter _foirst_,' he seth."
"Whether my name is Donovan or whether it's Smith, I do not wish to be be'olding to them, Doctor; I do not want their blasted milk. That is the long and short of it."
Applying my eye with feverish haste to the squint-hole, I perceived that she who uttered these proud sentiments was young and not ill-favoured, having red hair and freckles and a "Hands off" expression. "That," she repeated, "is the long and the short of it--if you can call it milk at all! They buy it from ole Tompkins."
"Well," said the doctor, feeling, evidently, that he was called upon to say _something_, "well, Mrs. Donovan----"
"One minit, Doctor," interpolated his visitor, "it is Wilson now, if you please, Doctor. Donovan was our name when we lived in Beddoes Street."
The doctor uttered an apology and began again. "Well, Mrs. Wilson, I----"
But the visitor again checked him. "Of course, Doctor," said the lady, "you will understand that _she_ don't know me by the name of Wilson. I am still Mrs. Bannister to 'er, same as I was in the ole days, when she got me to sign the pledge. Pledge, indeed! Fudge, _I_ call it. Did ever you 'ear of a thing so silly, Doctor? Me not turned eighteen at the time, and to make me sign a paper about never touching nothing for the rest of me life. And she calls 'erself a lady. With 'er airs an' graces, an' 'er two pennorth o' milk an' what not! I've broke the blessed thing a 'undred times, that is one comfort.
"The joke of it is, Doctor, that they almost force you to take their blessed milk. Is it right, I arst you, Doctor, that a person is forced to be beholding to another person for such a trivial thing as milk because they 'appen to be sister to the vicar? You understand my meaning, don't you?"
"You know yesself 'ow ill I been, Doctor. Well, then, she come round to my place every day, she did, with 'er little notebook and 'er gold-rimmed eye glasses, and what not, and she says to me, she says:--
"'I didn't ought to be visiting you at all, not be rights,' she says; 'but you was a good girl once,' she says, 'one of my very favourite girls once,' she says, 'though you _'ave_ made mock of your solemn pledge,' she says, 'and I thought I must come round,' she says, 'for old times' sake, and ask you what you mean be wastin' money on doctors,' she says.