The local doctor at Ventnor, who had been put in charge of my shattered health, was not satisfied that it was in any way improving, and, finding one day that I was in the habit of taking sleeping draughts, he snorted angrily off to the chemist and returned with a large tin of meat extract, with which he presented me, adding the intimation that it was worth a dozen bottles of my draught--which happened to be a powder--and that my London doctors were bereft of intelligence. I was too tired to argue the point and contented myself with the observation that all doctors save the one in attendance were fellows in intelligence--a sentiment he considered suspiciously for some moments before snorting away like the amiable little steam engine he was. His specific for sleeplessness was much more wholesome than drugs, and I have always found it so since then. {41} CHAPTER VI CAPTAIN O'SHEA ENTERS POLITICAL LIFE "_D'un coeur qui t'aime, Mon Dieu, qui peut troubler la tranquille paix? Il cherche, en tout, ta volunté suprème, Et ne se cherche jamais. Sur la terre, dans le ciel même, Est-il d'autre bonheur que la tranquille paix D'un coeur qui t'aime?_"--RACINE. Willie was too busy to come down to Ventnor again, and I became so depressed by the relaxing air and by the sight of the many poor consumptive people I met at every turn, veritable signposts in their different stages of disease of the road I had been warned that I was on, that I decided to go nearer home. My doctor suggested Hastings, and there I went, taking my small family under the kindly escort of one of my nephews. Willie soon came down, and, as my health improved rapidly, we stayed on for some time, making frequent visits to my Aunt "Ben" at Eltham, who was making our stay at the seaside possible. This was practically my first introduction to my aunt, as my former visits were when, as a little child, I was only allowed to sit by her side in the "tapestry room" trying to do some needlework under her supervision, and assisting her in the consumption of the luscious peaches she always had on the table. In those days I would have been wild with terror at the idea of being left alone with this aunt, who always wore the fashions of her early Victorian youth, and who would not tolerate the slightest noise in the house. I now found her {42} of fascinating interest, and even the painful sense of "hush" in her house, the noiseless stepping of the servants and the careful seclusion of sunlight had attractions for me. My uncle, Benjamin Wood, had died very many years before, and my aunt never alluded to him. She herself had never left Eltham since his death, and had only once been in a railway train, living in complete seclusion in her fine old Georgian house, only "taking the air" in the grounds adjoining or emerging forth in her chariot to drive for an hour daily.