“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, mamma,” said Dick; “Trevor has often asked me to go home with him on a Saturday. I’ll go--and I’ll manage to see her, and bring you back the news.” There was an eager assent on all sides to this proposition; and the mind of the family was kept in much suspense until Dick’s return. For, as Mrs. Eastwood justly remarked, a country doctor might be anything; it might mean a gentleman, highly considered and well to do; or it might mean a bustling little country practitioner, with no position of any sort. Without further information it was quite impossible to divine which of these two were meant; and everything depended upon the clearing up of the question. As for Molyneux, he was disposed to take the very gloomiest view of the matter. He thought that Frederick should be “spoken to,” and remonstrated with. The son of a Q.C., hoping shortly to be the son of a judge, does not look forward with any pride or satisfaction to the thought of becoming connected with “a country doctor.” Ernest argued that a man of high standing would never have been so described; a country doctor, he declared, could mean nothing but the most homely specimen of the profession--the workhouse doctor, the village apothecary. He was uneasy on the subject. He thought Mrs. Eastwood ought to be “very firm,” and that Frederick, for his own good, should have all the disadvantages of such a mésalliance pointed out to him. “It is not only a man’s own comfort that is destroyed, but that of all his connexions,” said Molyneux; “everybody belonging to him suffers,” and he insisted once more very sharply on the duty of the mother to be “firm,” so strongly, indeed, that Mrs. Eastwood took offence, though she did not say anything direct on the subject. “Ernest seems to be afraid that his connexion with us may do him harm in the world,” she permitted herself once to say to Nelly. “Oh, mamma, why do you judge Ernest so harshly?” cried the poor girl. But Nelly, too, felt that if Frederick should marry the daughter of a country doctor, her own lover would be deeply annoyed; and she, too, was wounded and offended by this, though perhaps unreasonably. So many of the feelings which make our weal or woe are unreasonable, and not to be excused. The household awaited Dick’s return with much anxiety. He came up by a very early train, with a cold in his head, and misanthropical tendencies generally. And Dick’s report was not such as made the family more happy. “I met Frederick yesterday,” he said. “The fellow accused me of coming to spy upon him. I asked him how I was to know where he went to amuse himself in secret? I was at the Trevors’, where I had often been asked. He blessed me, and that was all; he dared not say any more. But wasn’t he in a rage! I did not feel very nice myself; for after all I was a kind of spy.” “Indeed, I never thought of it in that light,” said his mother. “You went to find out something about Miss Batty--not to spy upon Frederick.”