Oldroyd felt rather uncomfortable, but there was comfort in Lucy's presence, as, utterly wanting in her mother's reserve, she busied herself in trying to make everything pleasant and attractive for their guest, in so natural and homely a manner, that while the doctor had felt one moment that he wished he had not stayed, the next he was quite reconciled to his fate. "I feel as sure as can be that I am right," thought Oldroyd, as at the end of a few minutes, Eliza entered with a large dish, whose contents were hidden by a battered and blackened cover, placed it upon the table, retreated, came back with a couple of vegetable dishes, retreated once more and came back with four dinner-plates, whose edges were chipped and stained from long usage. Oldroyd glanced at Lucy, and saw her pretty forehead wrinkled up, reading accurately enough that she was troubled at the shabbiness of the table's furnishings; and, as if she felt that he was gazing at her, she looked up quickly, caught his eye, and coloured with vexation, feeling certain as she did that he had read her thoughts. "Will you excuse me a moment, Mr Oldroyd?" said Mrs Alleyne, with dignity. "We do not use a dinner-bell, the noise disturbs my son. I always fetch him from the observatory myself." Oldroyd bowed again, and crossed the room to open the door for his hostess to pass out. "What a nuisance all this formality is," he thought to himself, "I hate it;" but all the same, he felt constrained to follow Mrs Alleyne's lead, and he was beginning once more to regret his stay when he turned to encounter the fresh, natural, girlish look of the daughter of the house. "Mamma makes a regular habit of fetching my brother to meals, Mr Oldroyd," said Lucy; "I don't believe he would come unless she went. But while she is away, do tell me once again you don't think Moray is going to be seriously ill?" "But I do think so," he replied. "Oh, Mr Oldroyd!" The young doctor gazed at the pretty sympathetic face with no little pleasure, as he saw its troubled look, and the tears rising in the eyes. "How nice," he thought, "to be anyone she cares for like this," and then he hugged himself upon his knowledge, which in this case was power--the power of being able to change that troubled face to one full of smiles. "I think he is going to be very seriously ill--if he does not alter his way of life." "He could avoid the illness, then?" cried Lucy, with the change coming. "Certainly he could. He has only to take proper rest and out-door exercise to be as well as you are." "Then pray advise him, Mr Oldroyd," said Lucy, who was beaming now. "Do try and get him to be sensible. It is of no use to send him medicine-- he would not take a drop. Hush! here he is."