“No, no, no, my dear Mrs. Wynne; such places for you are simply out of the question. I will go,” protested Mr. Jessop, who had never been inside such an institution in his life. “No, certainly not; they know me quite well at Cohen’s, and you are a stranger. I don’t mind one bit, as it will be for the last time; and why should it be more out of the question _now_, than yesterday? Does money make such a difference in a few hours?” (Money sometimes makes a difference in a few minutes.) * * * * * On the whole, Mr. Jessop approved. The scheme was rash, romantic, risky; but it was the only plan he could see for the present. Mrs. Wynne must take her father in hand, and talk him over. “He did not think she would have much trouble,” he added consolingly, as he looked at her pretty, animated face; and he told himself that the old fellow must have indeed a rocky heart if he could resist that. And now for business, for action, for a council of war. In a quarter of an hour it was all settled, so unanimous were Madeline and Mr. Jessop. A great doctor, whose speciality was low fever, was to be summoned the next morning. If he consented, Mr. Jessop was to come in the afternoon with a very, very easy brougham, and take the invalid at once to Waterloo station, and by rail and carriage to a farm house that he knew of, about fifty miles from London, where there was pure air, pure milk, and every incentive to health. The baby and Madeline were to follow the next day, after everything had been packed up and stored with Mrs. Kane, who was now amenable to anything, and amiable to imbecility. The prescribed journey did take place by luxurious and easy stages, and actually the next night Mr. Wynne passed under the red-tiled roof of the farm in Hampshire. He was worn out by fatigue, and slept well--slept till the crowing of the cocks and the lowing of the cows had announced, long previously, that the day was commenced for them. He sat in a lattice-paned sitting-room, looking into a sunny old-fashioned garden (filled in summer with hollyhocks, sunflowers, roses, and lavender, and many sweet-scented flowers well beloved of bees), and felt better already, and made an excellent early dinner, although his portly hostess declared, as she carried the dishes into the kitchen, “that the poor sick gentleman--and ay, deary me, he do look bad--had no more appetite than a canary!” The sick gentleman’s wife and baby appeared on the scene in the course of the afternoon, “a rare tall, pretty young lady she were,” quoth the farm folk. A country girl took charge of the infant, who, as long as he had plenty of milk in his bottle, and that bottle in his clutch, was fairly peaceable and contented with things in general; and was much taken with Mrs. Holt’s cap frills, with her bright tin dishes on the kitchen shelves, and with various other new and strange objects.