"Humph! I didn't know as you could afford to keep a pony, young man. Why don't you walk?--keep you better and stronger--and save your money. Ah, well! you may go then; and mind what I said to you. You may as well have the bit of land and Miss Lucy, but you won't get it yet, so don't think it. My father was a hundred and two when he died, and I'm only just past ninety, so don't expect too much." "I will not," said Oldroyd, smiling at the helpless old creature, and thinking how contentedly she bore her fate of living quite alone by the roadside, and with the nearest cottage far away. "You'll come and see me to-morrow?" said the old lady, as the doctor stood at the door. "You're not so busy that you can't spare time, so don't you try to tell me that." "No, I shall not be too busy," replied Oldroyd; "I'll come." "And mind you recollect about her. She would just suit you; she nusses so nicely, and--" Philip Oldroyd did not hear the end of the speech, for he closed the door, frowning with annoyance; and, mounting his pony, rode slowly back towards home. "I shall not meet them again, I suppose," he said to himself, as he neared the spot where he had seen Rolph and Judith on his way to the cottage; and, quite satisfied upon this point, he was riding softly on along the turf by the side of the road when, as he turned a corner, he came suddenly upon two men--the one ruddy and sun-browned, the other pale, close shaven, and sunken of eye. "Hayle and Captain Rolph," said the doctor between his teeth, "what does that mean?" He rode on to pass close by the pair, both of whom looked up, the one to give him a haughty nod of the head, the other to touch his hat and say,--"How do, doctor?" "The parson is said to know most about the affairs of people in a parish," thought Oldroyd; "but that will not do. It's a mistake. We are the knowing ones. Why, I could give quite a history of what is going on around us--if I liked. Your parson kens, as the north-country folk say, a' aboot their morals, but we doctors are well up in the mental and bodily state too. Now then, who next? Bound to say, if I take the short cut through the firs and along the grass drives, I shall meet the old major toadstool hunting, and possibly Miss Day with him." Oldroyd's ideas ran upon someone else; but he put the thoughts aside, and went on very moodily for a few minutes before his thoughts reverted to their former channel. "Safe to meet them," he muttered, with a bitter laugh. "Well, the captain is otherwise engaged to-day. The young lady with the gentleman as I came, and papa and the gentleman as I return. Well--go on Peter--I have enough to do with my own professional affairs, and giving advice gratis on moral matters is not in my department. No mention of them in the pharmacopoeia."