Now these and other similar prescriptions of Doctor Twaddles made illness so pleasant, that, coupled with the interesting character of the invalid costume (Mrs. Quinine wore the prettiest of nightcaps, trimmed with the most expensive of lace, when she received visitors in her bed-room), the lady naturally felt disposed to feel indisposed. And it was odd how the several complaints to which she professed herself subject, came and went with the fashionable seasons. In winter she was “peculiarly susceptible” to bronchitis, so that this necessitated her being in town at the gayest period of the metropolis. Doctor Twaddles would not take upon himself to answer for the consequences if Mrs. Quinine passed a winter in the provinces: and—what was a severe calamity—the poor lady could go nowhere in the summer for change of air, but to the fashionable and lively watering-places, for she was always affected with the hay fever if she visited the more retired and consequently duller parts of the country. The prevailing afflictions of Mrs. Quinine, however, were neuralgia, and “a general debility of the system”—indeed, she was always suffering from her “poor poor nerves;” and though subject to the greatest depression of spirits in the presence of her husband, (for that gentleman seldom remonstrated with her, but she burst into a flood of tears, and declared he was “throwing her back,”) still, before company, she was always lively enough, excepting when the visitors made tender inquiries after her health, and _then_ no one certainly could be more severely afflicted. Nor was the “debility” under which the lady laboured less eccentric in its nature, for though it prevented her taking any exercise in the open air—but in a carriage or on horseback—still, when an invitation came to a dance, it in no way interfered with her polking in an “extremely low” dress half the night through.