“Yes,” nodded little Miss Mary, “we have come to see for ourselves.” The tea-table caught Paddy’s eye then, and she had to go into raptures over again. “Omeath eggs!” she cried. “Omeath ham!—cream! honey!—marmalade!—parsonage tea cakes!—parsonage scones—parsonage apple pie! Oh, goodness! how ill I shall be to-morrow! Was ever such a delicious-looking meal! I shall be practising dispensing upon the whole household, I expect, in a few hours.” And then, just to relieve her feelings, she started hugging everybody over again, until the two poor little ladies’ caps were at such an impossible angle they were obliged to retire to put them straight. “If only Jack were here,” Paddy said longingly, as they sat down, “what a lovely occasion for a scramble it would be!” “We have had a letter from him,” said Miss Jane, in a glad voice. “You shall see it afterward. He has reached Buenos Aires safely and had a good voyage, and he gives a wonderful description of the flowers and loveliness of Montevideo. It is nice to think that the boy is seeing something of the world at last. We ought to have sent him abroad before. I am afraid we were very selfish.” And little Miss Mary chimed in with mournful agreement. “Oh, no, you weren’t,” asserted Paddy; “nothing of the kind. Jack was lazy, and I encouraged him, and it just serves us both right to have to work hard now.” They asked her how she was getting on with her studying, and she looked gravely mischievous and said, “Pretty middling.” “You see,” she continued, “medicines are very confusing. They’re nearly all water, with a little colouring, but the various colourings have long Latin names to give them an air of importance, and it’s very hard to remember which high-sounding name belongs to which colouring. I have to study a very learned book called the ‘Materia Medica,’ but I haven’t yet succeeded in making any sense of a single page and I have my doubts whether there is really any sense in the whole book. But I like going to the hospital,” she ran on. “The matron is nice and the nurses are jolly. The dispenser and I generally contrive to get tea in the dispensary in the afternoon, and whichever of them can manage it slips down and has a cup with us. Both the tea and bread and butter usually get flavoured with the nastiest drug lying about, but that is a mere detail.” “What is Aunt Edith like, and how do you get on with Basil?” they asked.