“You will send for a doctor soon, Heather; and do try that delightful man I was speaking to you about. His manner with children is quite charming: wins their little hearts, and makes them feel at home with him directly. I am sure, when I went to him with Mrs. Walter Hope about her Charlie’s legs, if he had been the boy’s father he could not have taken more interest in his case; said he must see him at least once a week, for six months; took the child on his knee, and made himself so pleasant. There was only one stupid remark he made, which surprised me in so clever a man, namely, that he could tell in a moment whose child Charlie was, his likeness to his mother being remarkable. I longed to ask him where his eyes were, for the boy is a Hope, every inch of him, and very like me,—even his own father admits that.” Heather laughed again; she was evidently in a laughing mood, for the slightest thing provoked her merriment. Perhaps it was a comfort to this “silly goose” to discover that even Miss Hope had her weak points, and could be touched through them like her neighbours; perhaps the description of Charlie’s model doctor tickled her fancy; any way she laughed; and Lally, putting up her little hand, patted her mother’s cheek, and smiled a weak, faint smile in sympathy, while she asked,— “Ma, was that ’tild as ill as me?” “Now I wonder,” broke out Miss Hope, “if it be a consequence of ‘original sin’ that children always speak bad grammar. Is it the depravity of our human nature which always confounds the parts of speech, and makes a jumble of the personal pronouns? She never heard bad grammar spoken by any one belonging to her, and only listen to her English; if you can call such a language as she speaks English. You want to know if Charlie was as ill as ‘me,’” added the spinster, directly addressing Lally; “yes; and a great deal-worse; his legs were like a bow, bent out like that;” and Miss Hope would have practically demonstrated what Charlie’s legs were like on Lally’s person, but that the child resisted any such experiments being attempted with her limbs. “Positively, Heather, you never saw such a sight as the child was,” she continued; “but Doctor Chickton assured Fanny he could make a perfect cure.” “Will he cure me?” asked Lally, egotistical as most sick people are. Months of undivided maternal solicitude, the devotion of a whole household, the visits of ladies vieing one with another who should bring Lally most toys and dainties, had spoiled the child a little, perhaps; or it may be that long illness and a close and undivided consideration of her own ailments, had produced a certain self-consciousness and absorption. In either case, there can be no question but that Lally was exceedingly sorry for herself, that she felt her case to be a very hard one; and that she was precisely in that state of mind and body which might well tire out any love except a mother’s, any patience save that which seems well-nigh inexhaustible.