However, as she could not, he had to act. So, after a hasty whisper with Dobbins--it was now getting late in the December night--he determined to proceed to Havre alone. Somebody had to go, for much had to be done; so much does not fall on all lawyer's shoulders as rested on Mr Trump's then. The dowager was accordingly left in the hands of Dobbins--who said that Doctor Jolly would probably return the next day, when he would undoubtedly take charge--and of the old woman-servant, who had described herself as being as hard-worked as "a pore nigger slave," but who now cheerfully attended to her mistress, with whom she had lived for some twenty years, having treated with indignation the suggestion of calling in a hired nurse. "Not if I knows it," she said, vehemently, "these hands wot 'ave worked for her twenty year will nuss her now; I should like ter know who else has any right to displace I?" So Dobbins conceded the points, at all events until Aesculapius proper should return; and he and the old woman nursed the dowager between them, and got her to bed, while Mr Trump went off on his travels. There was quite a revolution and a dark shadow in the old house, while the leafless poplars which encircled it seemed like funeral plumes, and the old house itself a hearse, in the hazy light of the dull December night. The lawyer's journey was a comparatively easy one in comparison with that which our old friend the doctor had taken some time before. He travelled rapidly to Southampton by the express, which he caught at Bigton--only occasional trains stopped at Hartwood--and was in plenty of time to despatch sundry telegraphic instructions to his clerks in London before embarking in the night boat for Havre. At midnight, instead of going to his warm bed in his comfortable suburban retreat, as he usually did at that hour, Mr Trump had to pull on his nightcap between the rolls of the waves, and ensconce himself in the narrow bunk that fell to his share of the cabin in the channel-crossing steam-packet. However, Mr Trump was a man of the world besides being a man of business, and knew how to accommodate himself to circumstances, and make matters as comfortable as he could under unforeseen data. So there is little doubt that he went to sleep at last, in spite of the narrowness of his lodging, and just as probably, he snored harmoniously to the accompaniment of the steamboat's paddles. The morning found him at Havre, prepared to set about his business as methodically as if he were only going down to his chambers in Bedford Row as usual, instead of being in a strange country.