I shall be glad of your assistance now, heaven
knows; only I can't imagine--"

"Never mind: will you take Grace Carden if I throw her into your arms?"

"Oh, mother, can you ask me?"

Mrs. Little rang the bell, and ordered a fly. Henry offered to accompany
her. She declined. "Go to bed early," said she, "and trust to your
mother. We are harder to beat sometimes than a good many Mr. Bolts."

She drove to Dr. Amboyne's house, and sent in her name. She was ushered
into the doctor's study, and found him shivering over an enormous fire.
"Influenza."

"Oh dear," said she, "I'm afraid you are very ill."

"Never mind that. Sit down. You will not make me any worse, you may be
sure of that." And he smiled affectionately on her.

"But I came to intrude my own troubles on you."

"All the better. That will help me forget mine."

Mrs. Little seated herself, and, after a slight hesitation, opened her
battery thus:--"Well, my good friend, I am come to ask you a favor. It
is to try and reconcile my brother and me. If any one can do it, you
can."

"Praise the method, not the man. If one could only persuade you to put
yourself in his place, and him to put himself in yours, you would be
both reconciled in five minutes."

"You forget we have been estranged this five-and-twenty years."

"No I don't. The only question is, whether you can and will deviate from
the practice of the world into an obese lunatic's system, both of you."

"Try ME, to begin."

The doctor's eyes sparkled with satisfaction. "Well, then," said he,
"first you must recollect all the differences you have seen between the
male and female mind, and imagine yourself a man."

"Oh, dear! that is so hard. But I have studied Henry. Well, there--I
have unsexed myself--in imagination."

"You are not only a man but a single-minded man, with a high and clear
sense of obligation. You are a trustee, bound by honor to protect
the interests of a certain woman and a certain child. The lady, under
influence, wishes to borrow her son's money, and risk it on rotten
security. You decline, and the lady's husband affronts you. In spite
of that affront, being a high-minded man not to be warped by petty
irritation, you hurry to your lawyers to get two thousand pounds of your
own, for the man who had affronted you."

"Is that so?" said Mrs. Little. "I was not aware of that."

"I have just learned it, accidentally, from the son of the solicitor
Raby went to that fatal night."