ntion the bad news
about Lucilla's sight to Oscar, until I had seen the German first, I made
the best excuse that suggested itself, and drove away--leaving the two
gentlemen in the waiting-room at the station.

I found Grosse confined to his easy-chair, with his gouty foot enveloped
in cool cabbage-leaves. Between pain and anxiety, his eyes were wilder,
his broken English was more grotesque than ever. When I appeared at the
door of his room and said good morning--in the frenzy of his impatience
he shook his fist at me.

"Good morning go-damn!" he roared out, "Where? where? where is Feench?"

I told him where we believed Lucilla to be. Grosse turned his head, and
shook his fist at a bottle on the chimney-piece next.

"Get that bottles on the chimney," he said. "And the eye-baths by the
side of him. Don't stop with your talky-talky-chatterations here. Go!
Save her eyes. Look! You do this. You throw her head back--soh!" He
illustrated the position so forcibly with his own head that he shook his
gouty foot, and screamed with the pain of it. He went on nevertheless,
glaring frightfully through his spectacles; gnashing his mustache
fiercely between his teeth. "Throw her head back. Fill the eye-baths;
turn him upsides-down over her open eyes. Drown them turn-turn-about in
my mixtures. Drown them, I say, one-down-todder-come-on, and if she
screech never mind it. Then bring her to me. For the lofe of Gott, bring
her to me. If you tie her hands and foots, bring her to me. What is the
womans stopping for? Go! go! go!"

"I want to ask you a question about Oscar," I said, "before I go."

He seized the pillow which supported his head--evidently intending to
expedite my departure by throwing it at me. I produced the railway
time-table as the best defensive weapon at my command. "Look at it for
yourself," I said; "and you will see that I must wait at the station, if
I don't wait here."

With some difficulty, I satisfied him that it was impossible to leave
London for Sydenham before a certain hour, and that I had at least ten
minutes to spare which might be just as well passed in consulting him. He
closed his glaring eyes, and laid his head back on the chair, thoroughly
exhausted with his own outbreak of excitement. "No matter how things
goes," he said, "a womans must wag her tongue. Goot. Wag yours."

"I am placed in a very difficult position," I began. "Oscar is going with
me to Lucilla. I shall of course take care, in the fir