going to send Frank on an expedition, and my father and Ellis are off
to settle preliminaries with poor Mrs. Probehurt, so that I shall
positively not have a creature to speak to. Reading excites me too much,
and produces a state of---- What is it you call it, doctor?"

"I told you yesterday I thought you were going into a state of coma,
when you fell asleep over that interesting paper of mine in the
_Lancet_, 'Recollections of the Knife'; if that's what you call
excitement," returned Ellis, laughing----

"Nonsense, Ellis, how absurd you are!" rejoined Oak-lands, half-amused
and half-annoyed at Ellis's remark; "but you have not granted my request
yet, Fanny."

"I do not think we have any engagement--mamma will, I am sure, be very
happy"--began Fanny, with a degree of hesitation for which I could not
account; but as I was afraid Oaklands might notice it, and attribute
it to a want of cordiality, I hastened to interrupt her by exclaiming,
"Mamma will be very happy--of course she will; and each and all of us
are always only too happy to get you here, old fellow; it does one's
heart good to see you beginning to look a little more like yourself
again. If Fanny's too idle to play chess, I'll take compassion upon you,
and give you a thorough beating myself."

"There are two good and sufficient reasons why you will not do anything
of the kind," replied Oaklands: "in the first place, while you have been
reading mathematics, I have been studying chess; and I think that I may,
without conceit, venture to pronounce myself the better player of the
two; and in the second place, as I told your sister just now, I am going
to send you out on an expedition."

"To send me on an expedition!" repeated I--"may I be allowed to inquire
its nature--where I am to go to--when I am to start--and all other
equally essential particulars?"

"They are soon told," returned Oaklands. "I wrote a few days since to
Lawless, asking him to come down for a week's hunting before the season
should be over; and this morning I received the following characteristic
answer: 'Dear Oaklands, a man who refuses a good offer is an ass (unless
he happens to have had a better one). Now, yours being the best offer
down in my book ~312~~ at present, I say, "done, along with you, old
fellow," thereby clearly proving that I am no ass. Q. E. D.--eh? that's
about the thing, isn't it? Now, look here, Jack Basset has asked me down
to Storley Wood for a day's pheasant shooti