Of course the young ladies did not make an old fellow like me a confidant of their hopes; but as I hobbled up or down the street, I could perceive that wherever two or three bonnets, or turban-hats, as I believe the vile things are called, were met together, there was a more than usually vivacious giggle, which showed me plainly enough what was the subject of conversation. On the days, too, when the Doctor began to be expected, about the time that the omnibus arrives in the afternoons, there were always several very neat boots and white stockings to be seen in the street; and those girls of Johnson’s—who never seem to have anything to do in their own house, though I know they keep but one servant, or rather slavey, and their mother is always up to her elbows in kitchen-work, so that she can find no time to read, or do anything else but talk, and is the most uninformed woman of my acquaintance—those girls took care to have some business with Mrs Cook, of the White Hart, about the forthcoming Rifle Corps Bazaar, and so have an excuse for being in her little private sitting-room, that looks out upon the street, at the time when the omnibus arrives. Poor old Mole! he could neither march nor lecture, row, nor play at chess or cricket: he had no more idea of music than a cow; his day for courting or getting married had long passed by; and he was fit for nothing but to make up gout pills, smoke his pipe, drink his gin-and-water, and tell his prosy old stories in his corner at the White Hart; and so all these people thought of course that they would be sure to have a change for the better in the New Doctor. At length came the day which was definitely fixed for the Doctor’s coming. It had been put off several times for some reasons of his own, but now he was to come without fail. We knew it from Mole, who had received a letter from the New Doctor, whose name, I may as well mention here, was Smith,—if that can be called a name at all—saying that he should positively arrive on that day, and expressing a hope that Mole would wait, and introduce him to his patients. But Mole would not wait any longer, for he had given up his house, and was living at expenses at the hotel; so he went away to his sisters, the three old maids, and left Mr Smith to introduce himself in the best way he could.