‘Yes, sir, begging your parding, which I just stepped round to my place to get a change of linen, and a little bit of tea and an odd and end of groshery at Mr. Binks’s in Stevedor-street; for there isn’t a spoonful of decent tea to be got at the grosher’s round about here, which I tell Mrs. Magsby when she offers uncommon kind to fetch any errands I may want. The wind has been that strong that it’s as much as I could do to keep my feet, particklar at the corners. It’s blowin’ a reglar gale. Hard lines for them poor souls at sea, I’m afeard, sir, and no less than three hundred and seventy-two immigrins went out of the Shadrack-basin this very day to Brisbian, which my daughter Mary Ann saw the wessle start—a most moving sight, she says.’ Mrs. Milderson talked rather with the air of a person who wishes to ward off a possible reproof by the interesting nature of her conversation. But Lucius was not to be diverted by Brisbane emigrants. ‘I don’t think it was in our agreement that you were to leave your patient, Mrs. Milderson,’ said he; ‘above all, during my absence.’ ‘Lor bless you, Dr. Davoren, I haven’t been away an hour and a half, or from that to two hours at most. I only just stepped round to my own place, and took the grosher’s coming back. I’d scarcely stop to say three words to Mary Ann, which she thought it unkind and unmotherly, poor child, being as she has one leg a little shorter than the other, and was always a mother’s girl, and ‘prenticed to the dressmaking at fourteen year old. Of course if I’d a’ knowed you’d be home to-night, I’d have put off going; but as to the dear old gentleman, I left him as comfortable as could be. He took his bit of dinner down-stairs in the parlour, and eat the best part of as prime a mutton-chop as you could wish to set eyes on; but he felt a little dull-like in that room, he said, without his granddaughter, “though I’m very glad she’s enjoying the fresh country air, poor child,” he says; so he went up to his bedroom again before seven o’clock, and had his cup of tea, and then began amusing of his self, turning over his papers and suchlike. And says I, “Have I your leaf to step round to my place for a hour or so, to get a change of clothes, Mr. Sivewright?” says I; and he says yes most agreeable; and that’s the longs and the shorts of it, Dr. Davoren.’ Lucius said nothing. He was displeased, disquieted even, by the woman’s desertion of her post, were it only for a couple of hours. Mrs. Magsby had opened the gate before this, and half Mrs. Milderson’s explanation had taken place in the forecourt. It had been too dark outside the house for Lucius to see Mrs. Magsby’s face; but by the dim lamplight in the hall he saw that she was unusually pale, and that her somewhat vacant countenance had a scared look. ‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ she began at once hurriedly, ‘I hope I haven’t done wrong. I haven’t forgot what you told me and my husband about not admitting nobody in your absence; but—’