“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.”