‘Well, I had it from very good authority. The charwoman that works at number seven in this street is own sister to Mrs. Jewell’s Mary Ann, and Mrs. Jewell and Mrs. Peacock in Green Street is bosom friends, and the house where you’re attending is exackerly opposite Mr. Peacock’s.’ ‘Excellent authority,’ answered Gerard, smiling, ‘but I am happy to tell you I haven’t a case of small-pox on my list. Did you ever hear of such a thing as rheumatic fever?’ ‘Hear of it,’ echoed Mrs. Evitt rapturously. ‘I’ve been down with it seven times.’ She looked very hard at him as she made the assertion, as if not expecting to be believed. ‘Have you?’ said Gerard. ‘Then I wonder you’re alive.’ ‘That’s what I wonder at myself,’ answered Mrs. Evitt, with subdued pride. ‘I must have had a splendid constitution to go through all I’ve gone through, and to be here to tell it. The quinsies I’ve had. Why, the mustard that’s been put to my throat in the form of poultices would stock a first-rate tea-grocer with the article. As to fever, I don’t think you could name the kind I haven’t had since I had the scarlatina at five months old and the whooping-cough atop of the measles before I’d got over it. I’ve been a martyr.’ ‘I’m afraid that damp kitchen of yours has had something to do with it,’ suggested Gerard. ‘Damp?’ cried Mrs. Evitt, casting up her hands. ‘You never made a greater mistake in your life, Mr. Gerard, than when you threw out such a remark. There ain’t a dryer room in London. No, Mr. Gerard, it ain’t damp, it’s sensitiveness. I’m a regular sensitive plant; and if there’s disease going about I take it. That’s why I asked you if the small-pox was in Green Street. I don’t want to be disfigurated in my old age.’ Mr. Gerard looked upon Mrs. Evitt’s ailments as in a large degree imaginary, but he found her weak and overworked, and gave her a gentle course of quinine, ill as he could afford to supply her with so expensive a tonic. For some time the quinine had a restorative effect, and Mrs. Evitt thought her lodger the first man in his profession. That young man understood her constitution as nobody else had ever understood it, she told her gossips, and that young man would make his way. A doctor who had understood a constitution which had hitherto baffled the faculty was bound to achieve greatness. Unfortunately, the good effect of Gerard’s prescription was not lasting. There was a good deal of wet and foggy weather at the close of the old year and at the beginning of the new year; and the damp and fog crept into Mrs. Evitt’s kitchen, and seemed to take hold of her hard-worked old bones. She exhibited some very fine examples of shivering--her teeth chattered, her complexion turned blue with cold. Even three-pennyworth of best unsweetened gin, taken in half a tumbler of boiling water, failed to comfort or exhilarate her.