"I tell you what I've a mind to do, Deb. I'm hanged if I don't go over to that foreign Frenchy place, and try and fetch Susan back myself! Tom has gone away, and I daresay he made a mull of it before, and the old woman won't do anything. I promised poor Roger Hartshorne to look after his children, and I'm hanged if I don't go over there and bring her back!" Pythias was at once relieved in her mind. It was not that artful designing creature then that Damon had in her thoughts. "Indeed, Richard!" she said, "but it is a long journey, and do you think at your time of life you can stand it?" she, like most country people who have never stirred out of their native wilds, looked upon a journey to France as if it comprised the circumnavigation of the globe. "Bosh, Deb! Why it's only a hundred and fifty miles or so from here to Havre, and I'll be back in a couple of days at most! It is right for me to go, and I can just manage now to get away for two or three days, for there's nobody ill and nothing doing; and that coal merchant fellow Dobbins, who came down here to set up for surgeon, can mind my practice for me. I'll go round and ask him this morning; he'll jump at the offer." "Well, if you think you ought to go, you must I suppose; and it is better now than any other time." "Of course I ought, and I will to, by Gad!" The doctor being a man of resolution, although he often did make hasty resolves, quickly settled his departure; and to the intense astonishment of everybody went away from Bigton for a week as he said, although he only intended to be away two days at the most, the whilom coal merchant Dobbins driving about in the doctor's chaise, which he seldom used himself unless the gout was very bad indeed, and making the most of his short resign until Aesculapius proper should come back to his own again. Doctor Jolly had never stirred out of his native town, save of course on short excursions into the surrounding neighbourhood, for nearly a quarter of a century; not for twenty-five years, ever since the time when he went to London to walk the boards of Guy's Hospital, in order to acquire his medical education; and naturally such an expedition as the present was quite an era in his life. But the doctor did not make "any bones" about it, as the popular expression runs. He packed up his traps in a small portmanteau; and after a very affecting farewell with Deborah, who fell upon his neck and embraced him, as if she were never going to see him again, telling him, "Take care of yourself, Richard! _Do_ take care of yourself!" to which he responded in his cheery voice, "God bless my soul! Deb, of course I will. God bless you!" he rubbed his eyes, which were glistening, with his horny fist, and blowing his nose vigorously with his bandana, the doctor went off on his travels.