“Sir,” continued Mr. Squills, biting off the end of a cigar which he pulled from his pocket, “you concede to me that it is a very important business on which you propose to go to London.”

“Of that there is no doubt,” replied my father.

“And the doing of business well or ill entirely depends upon the habit of body!” cried Mr. Squills, triumphantly. “Do you know, Mr. Caxton, that while you are looking so calm, and talking so quietly,—just on purpose to sustain your son and delude your wife,—do you know that your pulse, which is naturally little more than sixty, is nearly a hundred? Do you know, sir, that your mucous membranes are in a state of high irritation, apparent by the papillae at the tip of your tongue? And if, with a pulse like this and a tongue like that, you think of settling money matters with a set of sharp-witted tradesmen, all I can say is, that you are a ruined man.”

“But—” began my father.

“Did not Squire Rollick,” pursued Mr. Squills,—“Squire Rollick, the hardest head at a bargain I know of,—did not Squire Rollick sell that pretty little farm of his, Scranny Holt, for thirty per cent below its value? And what was the cause, sir? The whole county was in amaze! What was the cause, but an incipient simmering attack of the yellow jaundice, which made him take a gloomy view of human life and the agricultural interest? On the other hand, did not Lawyer Cool, the most prudent man in the three kingdoms,—Lawyer Cool, who was so methodical that all the clocks in the county were set by his watch,—plunge one morning head over heels into a frantic speculation for cultivating the bogs in Ireland? (His watch did not go right for the next three months, which made our whole shire an hour in advance of the rest of England!) And what was the cause of that nobody knew, till I was called in, and found the cerebral membrane in a state of acute irritation,—probably just in the region of his acquisitiveness and ideality. No, Mr. Caxton, you will stay at home and take a soothing preparation I shall send you, of lettuce-leaves and marshmallows. But I,” continued Squills, lighting his cigar and taking two determined whiffs,—“but I will go up to town and settle the business for you, and take with me this young gentleman, whose digestive functions are just in a state to deal safely with those horrible elements of dyspepsia,—the L. S. D.”

As he spoke, Mr. Squills set his foot significantly upon mine.

“But,” resumed my father, mildly, “though I thank you very much, Squills, for your kind offer, I do not recognize the necessity of accepting it. I am not so bad a philosopher as you seem to imagine; and the blow I have received has not so deranged my physical organization as to render me unfit to transact my affairs.”

“Hum!” grunted Squills, starting up and seizing my father’s pulse; “ninety-six,—ninety-six if a beat! And the tongue, sir!”

“Pshaw!” quoth my father; “you have not even seen my tongue!”

“No need of that; I know what it is by the state of the eyelids,—tip scarlet, sides rough as a nutmeg-grater!”

“Pshaw!” again said my father, this time impatiently.

“Well,” said Squills, solemnly, “it is my duty to say,” (here my mother entered, to tell me that supper was ready), “and I say it to you, Mrs. Caxton, and to you, Mr. Pisistratus Caxton, as the parties most nearly interested, that if you, sir, go to London upon this matter, I’ll not answer for the consequences.”

“Oh! Austin, Austin,” cried my mother, running up and throwing her arms round my father’s neck; while I, little less alarmed by Squills’s serious tone and aspect, represented strongly the inutility of Mr. Caxton’s personal interference at the present moment. All he could do on arriving in town would be to put the matter into the hands of a good lawyer, and that we could do for him; it would be time enough to send for him when the extent of the mischief done was more clearly ascertained. Meanwhile Squills griped my father’s pulse, and my mother hung on his neck.

“Ninety-six—ninety-seven!” groaned Squills in a hollow voice.

“I don’t believe it!” cried my father, almost in a passion,—“never better nor cooler in my life.”

“And the tongue—Look at his tongue, Mrs. Caxton,—a tongue, ma’am, so bright that you could see to read by it!”

“Oh! Austin, Austin!”

“My dear, it is not my tongue that is in fault, I assure you,” said my father, speaking through his teeth; “and the man knows no more of my tongue than he does of the Mysteries of Eleusis.”

“Put it out then,” exclaimed Squills; “and if it be not as I say, you have my leave to go to London and throw your whole fortune into the two great pits you have dug for it. Put it out!”

“Mr. Squills!” said my father, coloring,—“Mr. Squills, for shame!”

“Dear, dear, Austin! your hand is so hot; you are feverish, I am sure.”

“Not a bit of it.”

“But, sir, only just gratify Mr. Squills,” said I, coaxingly.

“There, there!” said my father, fairly baited into submission, and shyly exhibiting for a moment the extremest end of the vanquished organ of eloquence.

Squills darted forward his lynx-like eyes. “Red as a lobster, and rough as a gooseberry-bush!” cried Squills, in a tone of savage joy.