The doctor stopped and reflected. “Mrs. Clayton, the major’s blind widow, she is likely to take in the —— Magazine. I have not called on the old dame for years, but shell not take a visit amiss. I think that the house with green blinds is hers, and I am certain to find her at home.” Dr. Bardon was not disappointed this time. The blind old lady, who lived a dull and solitary life, was charmed to welcome an old acquaintance, and her visitor was yet more pleased to behold the desired periodical on the table half covered by the supplement of yesterday’s _Times_. After the first greetings were over, and inquiries after his “sweet child Caroline,” (for the lady’s memory was not particularly clear as to the name or age of Cecilia,) the doctor seated himself by the blind lady, laughing loud to cover the rustle as he drew the Magazine from under the paper, and then impatiently turned over the leaves. His object was to read the article; Mrs. Clayton’s was to obtain a medical opinion gratis upon the maladies with which she was, or fancied herself to be troubled. She proceeded, therefore, quite uninterrupted by her supposed auditor, with a long story of rheumatism and relaxed throat, the various remedies which she had tried for these evils, and the dubious success of each application; the eager reader giving an occasional grunt of assent, to save appearances, until the invalid paused in her narration. “Indeed, doctor, I’m beginning to think that the air of Pelton don’t agree with me; I begin to feel myself— “Hanging between earth and sky, like the fabled coffin of Mahomet!” muttered the doctor, who in his interest in what he was perusing, had almost forgotten the presence of her whose faint, complaining voice sounded like a trickling rill in his ear. “What is he saying about coffins and hanging?” thought the poor invalid. “It is very shocking to suggest such horrible ideas to a nervous creature like me!” As the doctor did not seem disposed to add to his incomprehensible communication, Mrs. Clayton proceeded on with her melancholy story. “Last winter my cough was so bad, that Mrs. Graham (you know Mrs. Graham, her daughter married a Bagot), she recommended me to take cochlico lozenges. I sent up all the way to London, there’s only one shop there that sells them, in one particular street, and I got a parcel of them down by the post. But I assure you, doctor, that they did me no good. I think that I must have caught a chill by venturing out in March; you know what the east winds are, doctor; I really had not a wink of sleep at night,—I actually thought my cough would have torn me to pieces.”