“No, Mannering,” said Dr. Roland, “I can’t say that you may go back to the Museum in a week. I don’t know when you will be up to going. I should think you had a good right to a long holiday after working there for so many years.”

“Not so many years,” said Mr. Mannering, “since the long break which you know of, Roland.”

“In the interest of science,” cried the doctor.

The patient shook his head with a melancholy smile. “Not in my own at least,” he said.

“Well, it is unnecessary to discuss that question. Back you cannot go, my good fellow, till you have recovered your strength to a very different point from that you are at now. You can’t go till after you’ve had a change. At present you’re nothing but a bundle of tendencies ready to develop into anything bad that’s going. That must be stopped in the first place, and you must have sea air, or mountain air, or country air, whichever you fancy. I won’t be dogmatic about the kind, but the thing you must have.”

“Impossible, impossible, impossible!” Mannering had begun to cry out while the other was speaking. “Why, man, you’re raving,” he said. “I—so accustomed to the air of Bloomsbury, and that especially fine sort which is to be had at the Museum, that I couldn’t breathe any other—I to have mountain air or sea air or country air! Nonsense! Any of them would stifle me in a couple of days.”

“You will have your say, of course. And you are a great scientific gent, I’m aware; but you know as little about your own health and what it wants as this child with her message. Well, Janie, what is it, you constant bother? Mr. Mannering? Take it to Miss Bethune, or wait till Miss Dora comes back.”

“Please, sir, the gentleman is waiting, and he says he won’t go till he’s pyed.”

“You little ass!” said the doctor. “What do you mean by coming with your ridiculous stories here?”

Mannering stretched out his thin hand and took the paper. “You see,” he said, with a faint laugh, “how right I was when I said I would have nothing to do with your changes of air. It is all that my pay will do to settle my bills, and no overplus for such vanities.”

“Nonsense, Mannering! The money will be forthcoming when it is known to be necessary.”

“From what quarter, I should be glad to hear? Do you think the Museum will grant me a premium for staying away, for being of no use? Not very likely! I shall not be left in the lurch; they will grant me three months’ holiday, or even six months’ holiday, and my salary as usual. But we shall have to reduce our expenses, Dora and I, and to live as quietly as possible, instead of going off like millionaires to revel upon fresh tipples of fancy air. No, no, nothing of the kind. And, besides, I don’t believe in them. I have made myself, as the French say, to the air of Bloomsbury, and in that I shall live or die.”

“You don’t speak at all, my dear fellow, like the man of sense you are,” said the doctor. “Fortunately, I can carry things with a high hand. When I open my mouth let no patient venture to contradict. You are going away to the country now. If you don’t conform to my rules, I am not at all sure I may not go further, and ordain that there is to be no work for six months, a winter on the Riviera, and so forth. I have got all these pains and penalties in my hand.”

“Better and better,” said Mannering, “a palace to live in, and a chef to cook for us, and our dinner off gold plate every day.”

“There is no telling what I may do if you put me to it,” Dr. Roland said, with a laugh. “But seriously, if it were my last word, you must get out of London. Nothing that you can do or say will save you from that.”

“We shall see,” said Mr. Mannering. “The sovereign power of an empty purse does great wonders. But here is Dora back, and without the big book, I am glad to see. What did Fiddler say?”

“I will tell you afterwards, father,” said Dora, developing suddenly a little proper pride.

“Nonsense! You can tell me now—that he had two or three people in his pocket who would have bought it willingly if he had not reserved it for me, and that it was a book that nobody wanted, and would be a drug on his hands.”

“Oh, father, how clever you are! That was exactly what he said: and I did not point out that he was contradicting himself, for fear it should make him angry. But he did not mind me. He said he could trust Mr. Mannering of the Museum; he was quite sure he should get paid; and he is sending it back by one of the young men, because it was too heavy for me.”

“My poor little girl! I ought to have known it would be too heavy for you.”

“Oh, never mind,” said Dora. “I only carried it half the way. It was getting very heavy indeed, I will not deny, when I met Mr. Gordon, and he carried it for me to Fiddler’s shop.”

“Who is Mr. Gordon?” said Mr. Mannering, raising his head.

“He is a friend of Miss Bethune’s,” said Dora, with something of hesitation in her voice which struck her father’s ear.

Dr. Roland looked very straight before him, taking care to make no comment, and not to meet Dora’s eye. There was a tacit understanding between them now on several subjects, which the invalid felt vaguely, but could not explain to himself. Fortunately, however, it had not even occurred to him that there was anything more remarkable in the fact of a young man, met at hazard, carrying Dora’s book for her, than if the civility had been shown to himself.

“You see,” he said, “it is painful to have to make you aware of all my indiscretions, Roland. What has a man to do with rare editions, who has a small income and an only child like mine? The only thing is,” he added, with a short laugh, “they should bring their price when they come to the hammer,—that has always been my consolation.”

“They are not coming to the hammer just yet,” said the doctor. He possessed himself furtively, but carelessly, of the piece of paper on the table—the bill which, as Janie said, was wanted by a gentleman waiting downstairs. “You just manage to get over this thing, Mannering,” he said, in an ingratiating tone, “and I’ll promise you a long bill of health and plenty of time to make up all your lost way. You don’t live in the same house with a doctor for nothing. I have been waiting for this for a long time. I could have told Vereker exactly what course it would take if he hadn’t been an ass, as all these successful men are. He did take a hint or two in spite of himself; for a profession is too much for a man, it gives a certain fictitious sense in some cases, even when he is an ass. Well, Mannering, of course I couldn’t prophesy what the end would be. You might have succumbed. With your habits, I thought it not unlikely.”

“You cold-blooded practitioner! And what do you mean by my habits? I’m not a toper or a reveller by night.”

“You are almost worse. You are a man of the Museum, drinking in bad air night and day, and never moving from your books when you can help it. It was ten to one against you; but some of you smoke-dried, gas-scented fellows have the devil’s own constitution, and you’ve pulled through.”

“Yes,” said Mannering, holding up his thin hand to the light, and thrusting forth a long spindle-shank of a leg, “I’ve pulled through—as much as is left of me. It isn’t a great deal to brag of.”

“Having done that, with proper care I don’t see why you shouldn’t have a long spell of health before you—as much health as a man can expect who despises all the laws of nature—and attain a very respectable age before you die.”

“Here’s promises!” said Mannering. He paused and laughed, and then added in a lower tone: “Do you think that’s so very desirable, after all?”

“Most men like it,” said the doctor; “or, at least, think they do. And for you, who have Dora to think of——”

“Yes, there’s Dora,” the patient said as if to himself.

“That being the case, you are not your own property, don’t you see? You have got to take care of yourself, whether you will or not. You have got to make life livable, now that it’s handed back to you. It’s a responsibility, like another. Having had it handed back to you, as I say, and being comparatively a young man—what are you, fifty?”

“Thereabout; not what you would call the flower of youth.”

“But a very practical, not disagreeable age—good for a great deal yet, if you treat it fairly; but, mind you, capable of giving you a great deal of annoyance, a great deal of trouble, if you don’t.”

“No more before the child,” said Mannering hastily. “We must cut our coat according to our cloth, but she need not be in all our secrets. What! turtle-soup again? Am I to be made an alderman of in spite of myself? No more of this, Hal, if you love me,” he said, shaking his gaunt head at the doctor, who was already disappearing downstairs.

Dr. Roland turned back to nod encouragingly to Dora, and to say: “All right, my dear; keep it up!” But his countenance changed as he turned away again, and when he had knocked and been admitted at Miss Bethune’s door, it was with a melancholy face, and a look of the greatest despondency, that he flung himself into the nearest chair.

“It will be all of no use,” he cried,—“of no use, if we can’t manage means and possibilities to pack them off somewhere. He will not hear of it! Wants to go back to the Museum next week—in July!—and to go on in Bloomsbury all the year, as if he had not been within a straw’s breadth of his life.”

“I was afraid of that,” said Miss Bethune, shaking her head.

“He ought to go to the country now,” said the doctor, “then to the sea, and before the coming on of winter go abroad. That’s the only programme for him. He ought to be a year away. Then he might come back to the Museum like a giant refreshed, and probably write some book, or make some discovery, or do some scientific business, that would crown him with glory, and cover all the expenses; but the obstinate beast will not see it. Upon my word!” cried Dr. Roland, “I wish there could be made a decree that only women should have the big illnesses; they have such faith in a doctor’s word, and such a scorn of possibilities: it always does them good to order them something that can’t be done, and then do it in face of everything—that’s what I should like for the good of the race.”

“I can’t say much for the good of the race,” said Miss Bethune; “but you’d easily find some poor wretch of a woman that would do it for the sake of some ungrateful brute of a man.”

“Ah, we haven’t come to that yet,” said the doctor regretfully; “the vicarious principle has not gone so far. If it had I daresay there would be plenty of poor wretches ready to bear their neighbours’ woes for a consideration. The simple rules of supply and demand would be enough to provide us proxies without any stronger sentiment: but philosophising won’t do us any good; it won’t coin money, or if it could, would not drop it into his pocket, which after all is the chief difficulty. He is not to be taken in any longer by your fictions about friendly offerings and cheap purchases. Here is a bill which that little anÆmic nuisance Janie brought in, with word that a gentleman was ‘wyaiting’ for the payment.”

“We’ll send for the gentleman, and settle it,” said Miss Bethune quietly, “and then it can’t come up to shame us again.”

The gentleman sent for turned up slowly, and came in with reluctance, keeping his face as much as possible averted. He was, however, too easily recognisable to make this contrivance available.

“Why, Hesketh, have you taken service with Fortnum and Mason?” the doctor cried.

“I’m in a trade protection office, sir,” said Hesketh. “I collect bills for parties.” He spoke with his eyes fixed on a distant corner, avoiding as much as possible every glance.

“In a trade protection office? And you mean to tell me that Fortnum and Mason, before even the season is over, collect their bills in this way?”

“They don’t have not to say so many customers in Bloomsbury, sir,” said the young man, with that quickly-conceived impudence which is so powerful a weapon, and so congenial to his race.

“Confound their insolence! I have a good mind to go myself and give them a bit of my mind,” cried Dr. Roland. “Bloomsbury has more sense, it seems, than I gave it credit for, and your pampered tradesman more impudence.”

“I would just do that,” said Miss Bethune. “And will it be long since you took to this trade protection, young man?—for Gilchrist brought me word you were ill in your bed not a week ago.”

“A man can’t stay in bed, when ’e has a wife to support, and with no ’ealth to speak of,” Hesketh replied, with a little bravado; but he was very pale, and wiped the unwholesome dews from his forehead.

“AnÆmia, body and soul,” said the doctor to the lady, in an undertone.

“You’ll come to his grandfather again in a moment,” said the lady to the doctor. “Now, my lad, you shall just listen to me. Put down this moment your trade protections, and all your devices. Did you not hear, by Gilchrist, that we were meaning to give you a new chance? Not for your sake, but for your wife’s, though she probably is just tarred with the same stick. We were meaning to set you up in a little shop in a quiet suburb.”

Here the young fellow made a grimace, but recollected himself, and said no word.

“Eh!” cried Miss Bethune, “that wouldn’t serve your purposes, my fine gentleman?”

“I never said so,” said the young man. “It’s awfully kind of you. Still, as I’ve got a place on my own hook, as it were—not that we mightn’t combine the two, my wife and I. She ain’t a bad saleswoman,” he added, with condescension. “We was in the same house of business before we was married—not that beastly old shop where they do nothing but take away the young gentlemen’s and young ladies’ characters. It’s as true as life what I say. Ask any one that has ever been there.”

“AnÆmia,” said Miss Bethune, to the doctor, aside, “would not be proof enough, if there were facts on the other hand.”

“I always mistrust facts,” the doctor replied.

“Here is your money,” she resumed. “Write me out the receipt, or rather, put your name to it. Now mind this, I will help you if you’re meaning to do well; but if I find out anything wrong in this, or hear that you’re in bed again to-morrow, and not fit to lift your head——”

“No man can answer for his health,” said young Hesketh solemnly. “I may be bad, I may be dead to-morrow, for anything I can tell.”

“That is true.”

“And my poor wife a widder, and the poor baby not born.”

“In these circumstances,” said Dr. Roland, “we’ll forgive her for what wasn’t her fault, and look after her. But that’s not likely, unless you are fool enough to let yourself be run over, or something of that sort, going out from here.”

“Which I won’t, sir, if I can help it.”

“And no great loss, either,” the doctor said in his undertone. He watched the payment grimly, and noticed that the young man’s hand shook in signing the receipt. What was the meaning of it? He sat for a moment in silence, while Hesketh’s steps, quickening as he went farther off, were heard going downstairs and towards the door. “I wish I were as sure that money would find its way to the pockets of Fortnum and Mason, as I am that yonder down-looking hound had a criminal grandfather,” he said.

“Well, there is the receipt, anyhow. Will you go and inquire?”

“To what good? There would be a great fuss, and the young fool would get into prison probably; whereas we may still hope that it is all right, and that he has turned over a new leaf.”

“I should not be content without being at the bottom of it,” said Miss Bethune; and then, after a pause: “There is another thing. The lady from South America that was here has been taken ill, Dr. Roland.”

“Ah, so!” cried the doctor. “I should like to go and see her.”

“You are not wanted to go and see her. It is I—which you will be surprised at—that is wanted, or, rather, Dora with me. I have had an anxious pleader here, imploring me by all that I hold dear. You will say that is not much, doctor.”

“I will say nothing of the kind. But I have little confidence in that lady from South America, or her young man.”

“The young man is just as fine a young fellow! Doubt as you like, there is no deceit about him; a countenance like the day, and eyes that meet you fair, look at him as you please. Doctor,” said Miss Bethune, faltering a little, “I have taken a great notion into my head that he may turn out to be a near relation of my own.”

“A relation of yours?” cried Dr. Roland, suppressing a whistle of astonishment. “My thoughts were going a very different way.”

“I know, and your thoughts are justified. The lady did not conceal that she was Mrs. Mannering’s sister: but the one thing does not hinder the other.”

“It would be a very curious coincidence—stranger, even, than usual.”

“Everything that’s strange is usual,” cried Miss Bethune vehemently. “It is we that have no eyes to see.”

“Perhaps,” said the doctor, who loved a paradox. “I tell you what,” he added briskly, “let me go and see this lady. I am very suspicious about her. I should like to make her out a little before risking it for Dora, even with you.”

“You think, perhaps, you would make it out better than I should,” said Miss Bethune, with some scorn. “Well, there is no saying. You would, no doubt, make out what is the matter with her, which is always the first thing that interests you.”

“It explains most things, when you know how to read it,” the doctor said; but in this point his opponent did not give in to him, it is hardly necessary to say. She was very much interested about Dora, but she was still more interested in the question which moved her own heart so deeply. The lady from South America might be in command of many facts on that point; and prudence seemed to argue that it was best to see and understand a little more about her first, before taking Dora, without her father’s knowledge, to a stranger who made such a claim upon her.

“Though if it is her mother’s sister, I don’t know who could have a stronger claim upon her,” said Miss Bethune.

“Provided her mother had a sister,” the doctor said.