"Boo! What nonsense. You a pauper! An educated gentleman, acknowledged to be talented in his profession. But I know you'd marry her to-morrow and turn your poor little sister out of doors if you had an income. Bother incomes and money! It's all horrid, and causes all the misery there is in the world. Pierce, you shan't run away from here and leave the poor girl to be married to that wretched boy." "Jenny, dear, be serious. I really must get away from here as soon as I can." "Oh, Pierce! Don't talk about it, dear. It is only to make yourself miserable through these silly ideas of honour; and it is to make me wretched, too, just when I am so well and so happy, and all that nasty London cough gone. I declare if you take me away I'll pine away and die." "No, you shan't, Sissy. You can't, with your own clever special physician at your side," he said merrily. "Not if you could help it, I know. But Pierce, darling, don't be such a coward. It's cruel to her to run away, and leave her unprotected." "Hold your tongue!" said Leigh peremptorily. "I tell you that is all imagination on your part." "And I tell you it is a fact I've seen and heard quite enough. Old Wilton is very poor, and he wants to get the money safe in his family. Mrs Wilton is only the old puss whose paws he is using for tongs. As for Claud--Ugh! I could really enjoy existence if I might box his big ears. Now look here, big boy," cried Jenny, impulsively snatching up the agent's letter: "I am going to burn this, for you shan't go away and make a medical martyr of yourself, just because the dearest girl in the world--who likes you already for your straightforward manly conduct towards her--happens to have a fortune, and your practice beginning to improve, too." "My practice beginning to improve!" he cried, contemptuously. "Yes, sir, improve; didn't you have a broken boy to mend yesterday? and haven't you a chance of the parish practice, which is twenty pounds a year? and oh, hooray, hooray! I am so glad, there's somebody ill at the Manor again. I hope it's Clodpole Claud this time," and she wildly waltzed round the room, waving the letter over her head, before stopping by the fire, throwing the paper in, and plumping down in a chair, looking demure and solemn as a nun. For Tom Jonson, the groom from the Manor, had driven over in the dog-cart, pulled up short, and now rang sharply at the bell. Leigh turned pale, for the man's manner betokened emergency, and he could only associate this with the patient to whom he had been called before. "Will you come over at once, sir, please?" "Miss Wilton worse?" "Oh, no, sir. Something wrong with young Master." Leigh uttered a sigh of relief, and stepped back for his hat. "Mr Wilton, junior, taken ill, dear," he said. "I heard, Pierce. Do kill him, or send him into a consumption." CHAPTER FIFTEEN.