She explained. “Physicians are obliged to send the rich to the chemist, or else the fools would think they were slighted. But we need not be so nice with the poor; we can prescribe to do them good. When you inflicted your company on me, I was sketching out a treatise, to be entitled, 'Cure of Disorders by Esculents.' That old man is nearly exsanguis. There is not a drug in creation that could do him an atom of good. Nourishing food may. If not, why, he is booked for the long journey. Well, he has had his innings. He is fourscore. Do you think _you_ will ever see fourscore--you and your vices?” “Oh, no. But I think _you_ will; and I hope so; for you go about doing good.” “And some people one could name go about doing mischief?” Severne made no reply. Soon after they discovered a little group, principally women and children. These were inspecting something on the ground, and chattering excitedly. The words of dire import, “She have possessed him with a devil,” struck their ear. But soon they caught sight of Miss Gale, and were dead silent. She said, “What is the matter? Oh, I see, the vermifuge has acted.” It was so: a putty-faced boy had been unable to eat his breakfast; had suffered malaise for hours afterward, and at last had been seized with a sort of dry retching, and had restored to the world they so adorn a number of amphibia, which now wriggled in a heap, and no doubt bitterly regretted the reckless impatience with which they had fled from an unpleasant medicine to a cold-hearted world. “Well, good people,” said Miss Gale, “what are you making a fuss about? Are they better in the boy or out of him?” The women could not find their candor at a moment's notice, but old Giles replied heartily, “Why, hout! better an empty house than a bad tenant.” “That is true,” said half a dozen voices at once. They could resist common sense in its liquid form, but not when solidified into a proverb. “Catch me the boy,” said Miss Gale, severely. Habitual culpability destroys self-confidence; so the boy suspected himself of crime, and instantly took to flight. His companions loved hunting; so three swifter boys followed him with a cheerful yell, secured him, and brought him up for sentence. “Don't be frightened, Jacob,” said the doctress. “I only want to know whether you feel better or worse.” His mother put in her word: “He was ever so bad all the morning.” “Hold your jaw,” said old Giles, “and let the boy tell his own tale.” “Well, then,” said Jacob, “I was mortal bad, but now do I feel like a feather; wust on't is, I be so blessed hungry now. Dall'd if I couldn't eat the devil--stuffed with thunder and lightning.” “I'll prescribe accordingly,” said Miss Gale, and wrote in pencil an order on a beefsteak pie they had sent her from the Court. The boy's companions put their heads together over this order, and offered their services to escort him. “No, thank you,” said the doctress. “He will go alone, you young monkeys. Your turn will come.”