grows on one like Drink; like Polemics; like Melodrama; like the
Millennium; like any Thing.

Sure enough, the very next week she and Julia sat patiently at the
morning levee of an eminent and titled London surgeon. Full forty
patients were before them: so they had to wait and wait. At last they
were ushered into the presence-chamber, and Mrs. Dodd entered on the
beaten ground of her daughter's symptoms. The noble surgeon stopped her
civilly but promptly. "Auscultation will give us the clue," said he, and
drew his stethoscope. Julia shrank and cast an appealing look at her
mother; but the impassive chevalier reported on each organ in turn
without moving his ear from the key-hole: "Lungs pretty sound," said he,
a little plaintively: "so is the liver. Now for the----Hum? There is no
kardiae insufficiency, I think, neither mitral nor tricuspid. If we find
no tendency to hypertrophy we shall do very well. Ah! I have succeeded in
diagnosing a slight diastolic murmur; very slight." He deposited the
instrument, and said, not without a certain shade of satisfaction that
his research had not been fruitless, "The heart is the peccant organ."

"Oh, sir! is it serious?" said poor Mrs. Dodd.

"By no means. Try this" (he scratched a prescription which would not have
misbecome the tomb of Cheops), "and come again in a month." Ting! He
struck a bell. That "ting" said, "Go, live, Guinea; and let another
come."

"Heart-disease now! " Said Mrs. Dodd, sinking back in her hired carriage,
and the tears were in her patient eyes.

"My own, own mamma," said Julia earnestly, "do not distress yourself. I