The fame of Mr. Hippy, and his hospitable office, was rapidly diffused by Dr. Killquick, the physician of the district; who thought a draught or pill could not possibly be efficacious, unless administered with an anecdote, and who was called in, in a very few hours after Mr. Hippy’s arrival, to cure the hypochondriacal old gentleman of an imaginary swelling in his elbow. The learned doctor, who had studied with peculiar care the symptoms, diagnostics, prognostics, sedatives, lenitives, and sanatives of hypochondriasis, had arrived at the sagacious conclusion that the most effectual method of curing an imaginary disease was to give the patient a real one; and he accordingly sent Mr. Hippy a pint bottle of mixture, to be taken by a tablespoonful every two hours, which would have infallibly accomplished the purpose, but that the bottle was cracked over the head of Harry Fell, for treading on his master’s toe, as he presented the composing potion, which would perhaps have composed him in the Roman sense. The fashionable attractions of Low-Wood and Keswick afforded facilities to some of Anthelia’s lovers to effect a _logement_ in her neighbourhood, from whence occasionally riding over to Melincourt Castle, they were hospitably received by the lord seneschal, Humphrey Hippy, Esquire, who often made them fixed stars in the circumference of that jovial system, of which the bottle and glasses are the sun and planets, till it was too late to dislodge for the night; by which means they sometimes contrived to pass several days together at the Castle.