"I don't think her so," continued Charlotte. "Madame St. Vincent told Mina this morning that she was all right; but when I went in just now she was in bed and could hardly answer me." "Is her cold worse?" "No; I think that is gone, or nearly so. She seemed dazed--stupid, more so than usual." "I certainly never saw any one alter so greatly as Lady Jenkins has altered in the last few months," spoke Mrs. Knox. "She is not like the same woman." "I'm sure I wish we had never gone that French journey!" said Mina. "She has never been well since. Oh, here's Arnold!" Dr. Knox had come straight into the garden from Jenkins House. Dicky rushed up to besiege his arms and legs; but, as Dicky was in a state of flour--which he had just put upon himself in the kitchen, or had had put upon him by the maids--the doctor ordered him to keep at arm's-length; and the doctor was the only person who could make himself obeyed by Dicky. "You have been to see Lady Jenkins, Arnold," said his step-mother. "How is she?" "Nothing much to boast of," lightly answered Dr. Knox. "Johnny, are you ready?" "I am going to be a soldier, Arnold," put in Dicky, dancing a kind of war-dance round him. "Captain Collinson is going to make me a captain like himself." "All right," said Arnold. "You must grow a little bigger first." "And, Arnold, the captain says---- Oh, my!" broke off Dicky, "what's this? What have I found?" The boy stooped to pick up something glittering that had caught his eye. It proved to be a curiously-shaped gold watch-key, with a small compass in it. Mina and Lotty both called out that it was Captain Collinson's, and must have dropped from his chain during a recent romp with Dicky. "I'll take it in to him at Lady Jenkins's," said Dicky. "You will do nothing of the sort, sir," corrected his mother, taking the key from him: she had been thoroughly put out by the suggestion of the "commission." "Should you chance to see the captain when you go out," she added to me, "tell him his watch-key is here." The phaeton waited outside. It was the oldest thing I ever saw in regard to fashion, and might have been in the firm hundreds of years. Its hood could be screwed up and down at will; just as the perch behind, where Thomas, the groom, generally sat, could be closed or opened. I asked Dr. Knox whether it had been built later than the year One. "Just a little, I suppose," he answered, smiling. "This vehicle was Dockett's special aversion. He christened it the 'conveyance,' and we have mostly called it so since." We were about to step into it, when Madame St. Vincent came tripping out of the gate up above. Dr. Knox met her. "I was sorry not to have been in the way when you left, doctor," she said to him in a tone of apology: "I had gone to get the jelly for Lady Jenkins. Do tell me what you think of her?" "She does not appear very lively," he answered; "but I can't find out that she is in any pain."