g him to keep on taking
physic?"

"And what would you and his friends say if I did not prescribe for him?"

"I should say it was the best thing, sir; and as to his friends, why, he
hasn't got any."

"Mr Burne?"

"What! the lawyer, sir? I don't call him a friend. Looks after the
money his poor pa left, and doles it out once a month, and comes and
takes snuff and blows his nose all over the room, as if he was a human
trombone, and then says, `hum!' and `ha!' and `send me word how he is
now and then,' and goes away."

"But his father's executor, Professor Preston?"

"Lor' bless the man! don't talk about him. I wrote to him last week
about how bad the poor boy was; and he came up from Oxford to see him,
and sat down and read something out of a roll of paper to him about his
dog."

"About his dog, Mrs Dunn?"

"Yes, sir, about his dog Pompey, and then about tombs--nice subject to
bring up to a poor boy half-dead with consumption! And as soon as he
had done reading he begins talking to him. You said Master Lawrence was
to be kept quiet, sir?"

"Certainly, Mrs Dunn."

"Well, if he didn't stand there sawing one of his hands about and
talking there, shouting at the poor lad as if he was in the next street,
or he was a hout-door preacher, till I couldn't bear it any longer, and
I made him go."

"Ah, I suppose the professor is accustomed to lecture."

"Then he had better go and lecture, sir. He sha'n't talk my poor boy to
death."

"Well, quiet is best for him, Mrs Dunn," said the doctor smiling at the
rosy-faced old lady, who had turned quite fierce; "but still, change and
something to interest him will do good."

"More good than physic, sir?"

"Well, yes, Mrs Dunn, I will be frank with you--more good than physic.
What did Mr Burne say about the poor fellow going to Madeira or the
south of France?"

"Said, sir, that he'd better take his Madeira out of a wine-glass and
his south of France out of a book. I don't know what he meant, and when
I asked him he only blew his nose till I felt as if I could have boxed
his ears. But now, doctor, what do you really think about the poor
dear? You see he's like my own boy. Didn't I nurse him when he was a
baby, and didn't his poor mother beg of me to always look after him?
And I have. Nobody can't say he ever had a shirt with a button off, or
a hole in his clean stockings, or put on anything before it was aired
till it was dry as a bone. But now tell me what yo