iding-skirt, Doctor. She should really be showed the regulations,
Doctor Kickelshin."

"She cares about no rules we can make, Mrs. Blower," said the Doctor;
"and her brother's will and pleasure, and Lady Penelope's whim of
indulging her, carry her through in every thing. They should take
advice on her case."

"Ay, truly, it's time to take advice, when young creatures like her
caper in amang dressed leddies, just as if they were come from
scampering on Leith sands.--Such a wark as my leddy makes wi' her,
Doctor! Ye would think they were baith fools of a feather."

"They might have flown on one wing, for what I know," said Dr.
Quackleben; "but there was early and sound advice taken in Lady
Penelope's case. My friend, the late Earl of Featherhead, was a man of
judgment--did little in his family but by rule of medicine--so that,
what with the waters, and what with my own care, Lady Penelope is only
freakish--fanciful--that's all--and her quality bears it out--the
peccant principle might have broken out under other treatment."

"Ay--she has been weel-friended," said the widow; "but this bairn
Mowbray, puir thing! how came she to be sae left to hersell?"

"Her mother was dead--her father thought of nothing but his sports,"
said the Doctor. "Her brother was educated in England, and cared for
nobody but himself, if he had been here. What education she got was at
her own hand--what reading she read was in a library full of old
romances--what friends or company she had was what chance sent her--then
no family-physician, not even a good surgeon, within ten miles! And so
you cannot wonder if the poor thing became unsettled."

"Puir thing!--no doctor!--nor even a surgeon!--But, Doctor," said the
widow, "maybe the puir thing had the enjoyment of her health, ye ken,
and, then"----

"Ah! ha, ha!--why _then_, madam, she needed a physician far more than if
she had been delicate. A skilful physician, Mrs. Blower, knows how to
bring down that robust health, which is a very alarming state of the
frame when it is considered _secundum artem_. Most sudden deaths happen
when people are in a robust state of health. Ah! that state of perfect
health is what the doctor dreads most on behalf of his patient."

"Ay, ay, Doctor?--I am quite sensible, nae doubt," said the widow, "of
the great advantage of having a skeelfu' person about ane."

Here the Doctor's voice, in his earnestness to convince Mrs. Blower of
the danger of supposing herself