“O! lor, Sir, you’re never a’going to cut up the pore gal, sure-ly!” “No! no! indeed! Make your mind easy, Mrs. Battleby! I intend to treat her by an entirely new process which, if I am not mistaken, will have an almost immediate effect in preventing those nervous tremors which seem to assail her.” “O! Sir, if you’ll cure ’er of them, I shall be thankful, for she must shake like an aspen leaf. I found ’er in the kitchen jest now, a’laying with ’er arms over the table trying to keep it down, and it was bumping under ’er as if it ’ad gone mad!” “Ah! Electricity does wonders in these days, you know, Mrs. Battleby, and I promise Hannah shall be quite herself again in a short time.” “And now, my dear Professor,” he said, as the landlady took her departure, “having settled Mrs. Battleby, what means shall we try by which to make the girl hold her tongue downstairs, about anything she may see or hear whilst with us?” “These means,” replied Ricardo, as he chinked the loose coins in his pocket. “They do not always answer,” said his friend, “and this seems a very simple and innocent sort of girl, who might be terrified out of her life if she guessed the real reason of our getting her to sit with us. I think it would be better to persuade her that she has a species of St. Vitus’s dance, and that it will get worse and worse unless I cure it in time. I’ll tell her, too, that she must be a little worse before she’s better, and, between the dread of being sent home again and the dread of becoming incapacitated for work, I think we shall manage to make her hold her tongue.” “I shall leave that part of the business to you,” said Ricardo. “You are more used to wheedle the ladies than I am. You doctors are terrible fellows! You keep a dozen weapons in your pocket for assuaging feminine fears, but I fancy you’ll have to use them all upon poor Hannah.” The upshot proved that the Professor was right. The friends agreed to meet again upon the following evening, when Hannah was summoned as soon as she had cleared away their tea, and introduced to their designs. At first the case seemed hopeless. Nothing would induce the girl to permit her powers to be used as a proof of what she could do. She declared that she was too much frightened of herself--that her one desire was to prevent such incomprehensible things occurring--and that she was sure, like Mrs. Battleby, that the Devil was in it, and prepared to drag her down to destruction.