-you'd believe me."

"I know all about it," said the doctor; "but Miss Underwood, Mrs
Smith--?"

"There's where it is, sir," said the landlady. "I can't find it in my
heart to say a word to Miss. To see how she do manage them all, to be
sure! but for all that, doctor, it stands to reason as one can't spoil
one's lodgings for a family as may be gone to-morrow--not except it's
considered in the rent. It's more natural-like to speak to a gentleman
like you as knows the world, than to a young lady as one hasn't a word
to say against--the handiest, liveliest, managingest! Ah, doctor, she'd
make a deal different a wife from her sister, that young lady would!
though it isn't my part to say nothink, considering all things, and that
you're relations, like; but Smith and me are both o' one mind about it,
Dr Rider--unless it's considered in the rent, or the gentleman drops
smoking, or----"

"I hear Miss Underwood coming down-stairs," cried young Rider. "Next
time I come we'll arrange it all. But not a word to _her_, remember--not
a syllable; and go up-stairs and look after that poor child, there's a
good soul--she trusts you while she is gone, and so do I. There, there!
another time. I'll take the responsibility of satisfying you, Mrs Smith,"
said the doctor, in a prodigious hurry, ready to promise anything in
this incautious moment, and bolting out of their little dark back-room,
which the local architect's mullions had converted into a kind of
condemned cell. Nettie stood at the door, all ready for her expedition
to Carlingford, with her two children, open-eyed and calmly inquisitive,
but no longer noisy. Mrs Fred was standing sulky at the parlour door.
The doctor took off his hat to her as he helped Nettie into the front
seat of the drag, but took care not to approach nearer. The children
were packed in behind, under charge of the little groom, and, with an
exhilarating sensation of lawlessness in the present pleasure, Dr Rider
turned his back upon his duty and the patient who expected him a mile on
the other side of St Roque's, and drove, not too rapidly, into
Carlingford.

"Mrs Smith was talking to you of us," said Nettie, flashing her
penetrating eyes upon the confused doctor. "I know she was--I could see
it in her face this morning, and in yours when you came out of her room.
Dreadful little dungeon, is it not? I wonder what the man meant, to
build such a place. Do they want to turn us out, Dr Edward, or do they
want m