In honest truth, as doctor after doctor was turned away by the impatient and distempered woman up-stairs, each one took occasion to say to us down-stairs that our aunt's illness was of that nature that all the physic it required was to have her fancies humored, and that we never need give ourselves any uneasiness, for she would doubtless live to a good old age, unless some acute disease should intervene, as there was nothing at all the matter with her except a slight nervous sensitiveness, that never destroyed anybody. I suppose we were a set of young heathen, for really there were times, if you will believe it, when that was not the most reassuring statement in the world. However. Sometimes Aunt Pen found a doctor, or a medicine, or a course of diet, or something, that gave her great sensations of relief, and then she would come down, and go about the house, and praise our administration, and say every thing went twice as far as it used to go before we came, and tell us delightful stories, of our mother's housewifely skill, and be quite herself again; and she would make the table ring with laughing, and give charming little tea-parties; and then we all did wish that Aunt Pen would live forever--and be down-stairs. But probably the next day, after one of the tea-parties, oysters, or claret punch, or hot cakes, or all together, had wrought their diablerie, and the doctor was sent for, and the warming-pan was brought out, and there was another six weeks' siege, in which, obeyed by every one, and physicked by herself, and sympathized with to her heart's content by callers, and shut up in a hot room with the windows full of flowering plants, and somebody reading endless novels to her with the lights burning all night long--if she wasn't ill she had every inducement to be, and nothing but an indomitable constitution hindered it. It was perfectly idle for us to tell her she was hurting herself; it only made her very indignant with us, and more determined than ever to persist in doing so.