Doctor Twaddles did not hesitate to confess himself delighted at the favourable change that had so evidently set in, saying it was due solely to the wonderful constitution of Mrs. Quinine; but, like a prudent man, he wished to “see how matters went on” for a short time, before he became a consenting party to her walking out—a thousand little things as he said might happen to throw her back again. The consequence was that the lady made up her mind to take the Doctor by surprise at his next visit, and not only to be ready in the sitting-room to receive him when he called, but to be able to say that she had breakfasted down stairs, and felt herself in no way fatigued with the exertion. Accordingly, Mrs. Quinine, for the first time since the coronation of Her Majesty Queen Victoria—when she had been obliged to be down in Parliament-street by six in the morning—had risen at daybreak. She had dressed herself with great care, so that she might be able to make the most favourable impression upon Twaddles. She had put on a clean white cambric robe-de-chambre, and left off applying the baby’s powder to her complexion; she had, moreover, such a delicate tinge of pink upon her cheeks, that it was difficult to say how the colour had got there in so short a space of time. Yesterday, she was as pale as if she had been white-washed—to-day, her cheeks were as pinky as the inner lining of a shell. Whether the change arose from the contrast of her white dress, or from the absence of the wonted “violet powder,” or whether from the faintest touch of the hare’s-foot that her prying maid had once discovered secreted in the lower tray of her dressing-case, must for ever remain one of those mysteries of the toilet that it is base presumption in Man to seek to unravel. Suffice it, Mrs. Quinine, even in her severest illness, never looked better; and as she left her bed-room, and gave a parting glance at herself in the long cheval-glass, she smiled with inward satisfaction at the appearance she made on her sudden restoration to health. Now as the lady was slowly descending the stairs on her way to the breakfast room, Mr. Christopher Sandboys was rapidly mounting to an upper apartment, whither he had been directed by Mrs. Fokesell as the only convenient place where he could cleanse his face, hands, and clothes, from the dust of the “half-ton” of coals, in which he and the partner of his bosom had been almost smothered. The more “particular” Mrs. Sandboys bad retired to the nearest “baths and washhouses,” convinced that nothing but a warm-bath could ever restore _her_ to her pristine purity.