The doctor put this query in just the same tone in which they inquire
"Any expectoration?" But Mrs. Dodd, in reply, was less dry and
business-like. She started and looked aghast. This possibility had once,
for a moment, occurred to her, but only to be rejected, the evidence
being all against it.

"In love?" said she. "That child, and I not know it!"

He said he had never supposed that. "But I thought I'd just ask ye; for
she has no bodily ailment, and the passions are all counterfeit diseases;
they are connected, like all diseases, with cerebral instability, have
their hearts and chills like all diseases, and their paroxysms and
remissions like all diseases. Nlistme! You have detected the signs of a
slight cerebral instability; I have ascertained th' absence of all
physical cause: then why make this healthy pashint's buddy a test-tube
for poisons? Sovereign drugs (I deal with no other, I leave the nullities
to the noodles) are either counterpoisons or poisons, and here there is
nothing to counterpoison at prisent. So I'm for caushin, and working on
the safe side th' hidge, till we are less in the dark. Mind ye, young
women at her age are kittle cattle; they have gusts o' this, and gusts o'
that, th' unreasonable imps. D'ye see these two pieces pasteboard? They
are tickets for a ball,

In Barkton town-hall."

"Yes, of course I see them," said Mrs. Dodd dolefully.

"Well, I prescribe 'em. And when they have been taken,