ut I know'd you didn't mean it. I say, Liz, is that big
gent with the rings and chains and shiny hat going to marry Miss Rich?"

"I don't know," said Elizabeth, suddenly growing deeply interested.
"Why?"

"Because he's always coming to see the doctor, and whenever I let him in
he asks me where Miss Rich is, and gives me something."

"Lor!"

"Yes, and he looks at her so."

"Do he, now? And what does Miss Rich say?"

"Oh, she only talks to him about its being fine or rainy, and as if she
didn't want to stop in the room."

"Then she is," said Elizabeth triumphantly.

"Is? Is what?"

"Going to marry him. That's the proper way to a lady to behave."

"Oh!" said Bob shortly, and a curious frown came over his countenance.
"I don't like him, somehow. I wish one didn't want money quite so bad."

Bob went up-stairs, and the place being empty he shut himself up in the
surgery, to indulge in a morbid taste for trying flavour or odour of
everything in the place, and fortunately so far without fatal or even
dangerous results.

After a time he had a fit, and prescribed for himself _Syrup Aurantii_--
so much in cold water, leaving himself in imagination in the chair while
he mixed the medicine, and going back to the chair to take it. After
recovering from his imaginary fit, he spelled over a number of the
_Lancet_, dwelling long over in account of an operation of a novel kind;
and ending by standing upon a chair and carefully noting the contents of
the doctor's glass jars of preparations, which he turned round and round
till he was tired, and came down, to finish the morning by helping
himself to about a teaspoonful of chlorate of potassium, which he placed
in his trousers-pocket, not from any intention of taking it to purify
his blood, but to drop in pinches in the kitchen fire and startle
Elizabeth.

"Teach her not to say things agen my old woman," said Bob. "Just as if
she can help being old!"

CHAPTER FIVE.

A SISTER'S TRIAL.

"Don't ask questions. There's the money; take it. You don't think I
stole it, do you?"

"Stole it, Hendon dear? No, of course. How can you talk so?"

"Then, why don't you take it?"

"Because, as your sister, I think I have a right to know whence it
comes."

"And, as your brother, seeing how we live here, in everybody's debt, I
don't think you need be so jolly particular."

"However poor we are, Hendon, we need not lose our self-respect."

"Self-respect! How is a ma