long ago; and that I should be a lucky woman if my constitution was half as fine as hers. So as I saw it was useless arguing the point with her, I let her have her own way, and was’nt at all sorry when ten o’clock came, and I had seen her fairly up stairs to her bed-room, where she kept Susan a good three-quarters of an hour at least fiddle-faddleing and tying her flannel petticoat round her head, and tucking her up, and pinning her shawl before the window, and what not. Next morning, when she came down to breakfast, she told us that she had got the rheumatism in both her legs so bad, that she had been forced to wrap them up in brown paper, which she said she found to be the best of all remedies, and an infallible cure; and sure enough there she was going about the house with her legs done up for all the world like a pair of new tongs in an ironmonger’s shop. All breakfast time, she would tell us how she had made it a duty to try every new cure as fast as it came up, and how she supposed she must have written in her time at least thirty testimonials of wonderful cures effected upon her by different medicines, which, she said, she had since found out had never done her any good at all. At one time, she swore by brandy and salt, and she took so much of it, that, instead of curing her illness, she verily believed she was only curing herself like so much bacon. At another period, she had pinned her faith entirely to cold water, and she was sure she must have swallowed a small river in her time; she had had it pumped upon her too, and sat in it, and bathed in it, and slept in it, she might say, for she went to bed in nothing but damp sheets for a year and more--until really she had washed every bit of colour out of her cheeks; and she felt that if she was to wring her hands, water would run from them like a wet flannel. After that, she had gone raving mad about homœopathy, and had nearly starved herself to death with its finikin infinitessimal doses; for whole weeks she used to take nothing for breakfast but the billionth part of a spoonful of tea in a quart of boiling water, and the ten thousandth part of an ounce of butter to eight sixty-sixths of a quartern loaf; while her dinner had frequently consisted of three ounces and two drachms of the lean of a neck of mutton made into broth with a gallon of water, flavoured with three pennyweights of carrot, and a scruple of greens, and seasoned with two grains and a half of pepper, and the sixteenth of a pinch of salt. Since, however, she had discovered her wonderful pill, she had left all her other specifics, and never felt so well, and consequently so happy, before: and then she pulled out a box, and would make me take a couple of the filthy little things with my tea, saying that they would make me so comfortable and good-tempered, that I should hardly know myself again.