“So it does, my lord. Thank your lordship for thinking of me,” added Jenkins, as the bishop said good afternoon, and pursued his way. And then, and not till then, did Jenkins put on his hat again. “Mr. Arthur, would you be so kind as not to say anything to my wife about my being poorly?” asked Jenkins, as they drew near to his home. “She’d be perhaps, for saying I should not go again yet to the office; and a pretty dilemma that would put me in, Mr. Galloway being absent. She’d get so fidgety, too: she kills me with kindness, if she thinks I am ill. The broth and arrowroot, and other messes, sir, that she makes me swallow, are untellable.” “All right,” said Arthur. But the intention was frustrated. Who should be standing at the shop-door but Mrs. Jenkins herself. She saw them before they saw her, and she saw that her husband looked like a ghost, and was supported by Arthur. Of course, she drew her own conclusions; and Mrs. Jenkins was one who did not allow her conclusions to be set aside. When Jenkins found that he was seen and suspected, he held out no longer, but honestly confessed the worst--that he had been taken with a giddiness. “Of course,” said Mrs. Jenkins, as she pushed a chair here and another there, partly in temper, partly to free the narrow passage through the shop to the parlour. “I have been expecting nothing less all day. Every group of footsteps slower than usual, I have thought it was a shutter arriving and you on it, dropped dead from exhaustion. Would you believe”--turning short round on Arthur Channing--“that he has been such a donkey as to fast from breakfast time? And with that cough upon him!” “Not quite so fast, my dear,” deprecated Jenkins. “I ate the paper of sandwiches.” “Paper of rubbish!” retorted Mrs. Jenkins. “What good do sandwiches do a weakly man? You might eat a ton-load, and be none the better for it. Well, Jenkins, you may take your leave of having your own way.” Poor Jenkins might have deferentially intimated that he never did have it. Mrs. Jenkins resumed: “He said he’d carry a sandwich with him this morning, instead of coming home to dinner. I said, ‘No.’ And afterwards I was such a simpleton as to yield! And here’s the effects of it! Sit yourself down in the easy-chair,” she added, taking Jenkins by the arms and pushing him into it. “And I’ll make the tea now,” concluded she, turning to the table where the tea-things were set out. “There’s some broiled fowl coming up for you.” “I don’t feel as if I could eat this evening,” Jenkins ventured to say. “_Not eat_!” she repeated with emphasis. “You had better eat--that’s all. I don’t want to have you falling down exhausted here, as you did in the Boundaries.” “And as soon as you have had your tea, you should go to bed,” put in Arthur. “I can’t, sir. I have three or four hours’ work at that deed. It must be done.”