Of course she was so happy to see her dear boy, “whose house she was going to make her home;” and declared she was delighted to make _my_ acquaintance. Edward very imprudently would go inquiring after her health, when immediately off my lady went, and kept us for full half an hour, giving us a whole catalogue of all her illnesses and cures, and telling us how she had discovered a new pill which had really worked miracles with her. As I kept saying, “Indeed,” and “Bless me,” and “You don’t say so,” and appearing very interested--though all the time I could have wished her further--she had the impudence to tell me that, as a treat, she would let me have a couple to try on the morrow, for she could plainly see my liver was out of order--though, as I said to myself at the time, I should like to know what my liver was to her indeed. However, I slipped out of the room to look after Susan and the tray, and made her warm up one of the pork chops, and bring it up with the tea. But no sooner did my lady see it, than she said it would be death to her if she touched it, and before she let me make the tea, she would go and undo one of her boxes in the hall, just to get out a loaf of digestive bread, and a bottle of filthy soda; and if she didn’t force me to put half a teaspoonful at least into the pot, telling me that it would correct all the acidity, and make the tea go twice as far--which I can easily understand, as I’m sure neither Edward nor myself could touch it; for I declare it was more like soap-suds than full-flavoured wiry Pekoe. The worst of it was, too, I was obliged to say it “was very nice, I was sure;” and I could see _that_ Edward, laughing away in his sleeve at every sip I took. Then she would sit all the evening with her shawl over her shoulders, declaring that the draughts came in at our door enough to cut her in two; and, bother take it, she made me go down stairs and see that the sheets for her bed were well aired--and give orders for a fire to be lighted in her room--and the feather-bed put down before it--and a pan of hot water to be taken up for her at ten precisely--and for a few spoonfuls of brown sugar to be put into the warming-pan with the coals, before warming her bed; adding that, with a good large basin of gruel, and a James’s powder in it, she thought she should do for _that_ night. And really I should have thought so too. But what pleased me most was, that she said she was putting me to a great deal of trouble. And I should think she was too--though of course I was forced to assure her that she wasn’t, and that nothing gave me more pleasure than to be able to assist one with such a bad constitution as she appeared to have of her own. Whereupon she flew at me very spitefully, and told me I was never more mistaken in all my life, for every one that knew her allowed, that if it hadn’t been for her very fine constitution, and a score of Morison’s Number Two’s daily, she should have been in Abraham’s bosom