“Very kind, is he? Yes, yes--say so, say so. But”--and she hesitated, and passed her hand across her forehead, as though mentally striving to recall her flitting senses--“Take 'em back--away with 'em--tell him--Oh! I'm ill, I'm ill!” [Illustration: 023] She fell back insensible. The old woman and Fanny screamed first, and then ran for the surgeon. Within a very brief period Master Colin Clink appeared before the world, some half a day or so earlier than, to the best of my belief, nature originally intended he should. But it is the peculiar faculty of violent tempers to precipitate events, and realize prospective troubles before their time. As the reader will subsequently be called upon to make a more close acquaintance with the professional gentleman now introduced to notice, it may not be improper briefly to observe, that, amongst many other recommendations to the notice and favour of the public, the doctor offered himself as a guardian to “persons of unsound mind,” with, of course, the kindest and best mode of treatment that could possibly be adopted. In plain words, he kept a “retreat,” or private madhouse, for the especial and peculiar accommodation of those eager young gentlemen who may, perchance, find it more agreeable to shut up their elderly relations in a lunatic's cell, than to wait until death shall have relieved them of the antique burthen. The doctor's establishment was one of the worst of a bad kind; and, as we shall eventually see, he was in the regular practice of making a very curious application of it. We may now conclude the chapter. While Doctor Rowel was preparing for his departure, he chanced, in the course of some casual chat with one of the old gossips present, to ask where the sick woman's husband was at this interesting moment of his life; but, unluckily for his curiosity, all the old women were immediately seized with a momentary deafness, which totally prevented them from hearing his question, though it was twice repeated. He then asked how it came about that the Squire had sent such a pretty basket of baby-linen to Mistress Clink? But their ears were equally impervious to the sound of that inquiry as to the other; thus proving to a demonstration, that while there are some matters which certain ingenious people imagine they thoroughly understand even from the slightest hints and innuendoes, which is precisely the case with the good reader himself at this moment, (so far as our present story is concerned,) there are other matters that, put them into whatever language you will, can never be rendered at all comprehensible to discreet grown-up people.