ow.
He leaned forward, and looked at me close; he drew back, and looked at me
from a distance; he took out his magnifying glass, and had a long stare
through it at my eyes; he felt my pulse; dropped my wrist as if it
disgusted him; and, turning to the window, looked out in grim silence,
without taking the slightest notice of any one in the room.

My aunt was the first person who spoke, under these discouraging
circumstances.

"Mr. Grosse!" she said sharply. "Have you nothing to tell me about your
patient to-day? Do you find Lucilla----"

He turned suddenly round from the window, and interrupted Miss Batchford
without the slightest ceremony.

"I find her gone back, back, back!" he growled, getting louder and louder
at each repetition of the word. "When I sent her here, I said--'Keep her
comfortable-easy.' You have not kept her comfortable-easy. Something has
turned her poor little mind topsy-turvies. What is it? Who is it?" He
looked fiercely backwards and forwards between Oscar and my aunt--then
turned my way, and putting his heavy hands on my shoulders, looked down
at me with an odd angry kind of pity in his face. "My childs is
melancholick; my childs is ill," he went on. "Where is our goot-dear
Pratolungo? What did you tell me about her, my little-lofe, when I last
saw you? You said she had gone aways to see her Papa. Send a
telegrams--and say I want Pratolungo here."

At the repetition of Madame Pratolungo's name, Miss Batchford rose to her
feet and stood (apparently) several inches higher than usual.

"Am I to understand, sir," inquired the old lady, "that your
extraordinary language is intended to cast a reproach on my conduct
towards my niece?"

"You are to understand this, madam. In the face of the goot sea-airs,
Miss your niece is fretting herself ill. I sent her to this place, for to
get a rosy face, for to put on a firm flesh. How do I find her? She has
got nothing, she has put on nothing--she is emphatically flabby-pale. In
this fine airs, she can be flabby-pale but for one reason. She is
fretting herself about something or anodder. Is fretting herself goot for
her eyes? Ho-damn-damn! it is as bad for her eyes as bad can be. If you
can do no better than this, take her aways back again. You are wasting
your moneys in this lodgment here."

My aunt addressed herself to me in her grandest manner.

"You will understand, Lucilla, that it is impossible for me to notice
such language as this in any other w