When the doctor came, he lanced her gums and ordered her to be put in a warm bath directly, and to have three leeches put upon each temple. Betsy put the leeches on, for it made my flesh creep to see, let alone to handle, the nasty slimy things, like the fingers of wet black kid gloves; and, besides, I knew I should faint dead off directly I saw my poppit’s vital stream trickling down her little cheeks. When the nasty things were taken off my pet, that stupid Betsy came down to me to know if I should like them kept. “Kept!” I cried; “bless the woman, no; go and throw them over the garden, and let the fowls at the Simmondses have them, for Heaven’s sake.” Of course what must she do but take them down stairs first, just to let that young monkey of a Wittals catch sight of them, and no sooner did he set eyes upon them, than he went to work and wheedled my lady into letting him have the filthy things to keep in one of my old pickle bottles in his bedroom--though from all I had said to her about the crawling creatures, she very well knew that I wouldn’t have them in the house for all that anybody could give me; for I can’t say how it is, but I really had a presentiment at the time that if they were not destroyed, something awful would happen. Nor was I wrong, and all through that wicked, story-telling, perverse Betsy, and that good-for-nothing, careless, menagerie-keeping young imp of a Wittals--though, for the matter of that, he wasn’t half so much to blame as she was. My beautiful poor little lamb of a Kate, though much better, was still so ill that I didn’t like to let her sleep with nurse; so I told Sarah to put her in our bed. But the little dove was so restless all night that I couldn’t get a wink of sleep, and had to be either sitting up in the bed trying to rock her off to sleep, or else taking it in turns with Edward to pace the room with her in my arms, and merely a shawl over my shoulders. The consequence of this was, that the cold and cough which had been hanging about me ever since I was wet through, were not at all improved the next day. So in the morning, when Mr. Jupp, our medical adviser, called to see my little trot, I asked him if he would be good enough to send me round another box of the very nice cough lozenges which he had in his shop, and which had already done me a world of good.