“Oh! What! didn't I tell you? Well, there's nothing the matter with her.”
At receiving this cavalier reply for the reward of all her patience, Mrs. Dodd was so hurt, and so nearly angry, that she rose with dignity from her seat, her cheek actually pink, and the water in her eyes. Sampson saw she was ruffled, and appealed to Julia--of all people. “There now, Miss Julia,” said he, ruefully; “she is in a rage because I won't humbug her. Poplus voolt decipee. I tell you, ma'am, it is not a midical case. Give me disease and I'll cure 't. Stop, I'll tell ye what do: let her take and swallow the Barkton Docks' prescriptions, and Butcher Best's, and canting Kinyon's, and after those four tinkers there'll be plenty holes to mend; then send for me!”
Here was irony. Mrs. Dodd retorted by _finesse._ She turned on him with a treacherous smile, and said: “Never mind doctors and patients; it is so long since we met; I do hope you will waive ceremony, and dine with me _en ami._”
He accepted with pleasure; but must return to his inn first and get rid of his dirty boots and pashints. And with this he whipped out his watch, and saw that, dealing with universal medicine, he had disappointed more than one sick individual; so shot out as hard as he had shot in, and left the ladies looking at one another after the phenomenon.
“Well?” said Julia, with a world of meaning.
“Yes, dear,” replied Mrs. Dodd, “he _is_ a little eccentric. I think I will request them to make some addition to the dinner.”
“No, mamma, if you please, not to put me off so transparently. If I had interrupted, and shouted, and behaved so, you would have packed _me_ off to bed, or somewhere, directly.”
“Don't say 'packed,' love. Dismissed me to bed.”
“Ah!” cried Julia, “that privileged person is gone, and we must all mind our P's and Q's once more.”
Mrs. Dodd, with an air of nonchalance, replied to the effect that Dr. Sampson was not her offspring, and so she was not bound to correct his eccentricities. “And I suppose,” said she, languidly, “we must accept these extraordinary people as we find them. But that is no reason why _you_ should say 'P's and Q's,' darling.”
That day her hospitable board was spread over a trap. Blessed with an oracle irrelevantly fluent, and dumb to the point, she had asked him to dinner with maternal address. He could not be on his guard eternally; sooner or later, through inadvertence, or in a moment of convivial recklessness, or in a parenthesis of some grand Generality, he would cure her child: or, perhaps, at his rate of talking, would wear out all his idle themes, down to the very “well-being of mankind;” and them Julia's mysterious indisposition would come on the blank tapis. With these secret hopes she presided at the feast, all grace and gentle amity. Julia, too, sat down with a little design, but a very different one, viz., of being chilly company; for she disliked this new acquaintance, and hated the science of medicine.