But Hannah was sullen. She only shook herself free of Mrs. Battleby’s grasp, and sat on the side of the bed, with her lips stuck out like those of a negress. “Now then,” exclaimed her mistress, “wot’s this for, I’d like to know! If the Doctor is good enough to try and cure you (which I’m sure, I wonders he takes the trouble to do it), the least thing you can do in return, is to be grateful.” “Well! then, I ain’t,” replied the girl, “I’d rather wash up dishes or scrub floors a ’undred times over, than be physicked. I never could abear it! It give me a ’eadache last time, and I don’t want no more of it.” But Mrs. Battleby had become reconciled to the arrangement, and had no intention of breaking it. She found that she got quite as much work out of Hannah as before, and she was not going to let the chance of keeping her at the Professor’s expense, slip. “Well! then,” she commenced, “you’ll do as you’re told, Hannah Stubbs, or back you goes to Settlefield to-morrer, and with sich a character at your back as you won’t easy get rid of! You’ll please to remember that whilst you’re here you’re my servant, and bound to do my bidding, and I orders you to smooth your ’air, and go up to the gentlemen at onst, as they’re ready and waiting for you.” Hannah burst into tears and muttered something about not having come out to service to be cut up, or pisened, just as the missus chose, but she crawled upstairs after a while, all the same, and presented herself at the door of the Professor’s room, where she clung to the lintel as if she dared advance no further. “Good evening, my dear,” said the Professor, kindly, “you are rather late. Did not you remember that you were to see Doctor Steinberg again to-night?” “I don’t want to be doctored,” said the girl, in the same tone she had used downstairs, “it don’t do me no good, it makes me wuss!” “You have not tried it long enough to know if it will do you any good,” replied Steinberg. “And what do you mean by its making you worse?” interposed Ricardo, “how can it make you worse, Hannah?” “Well, then, it do, a deal,” said the girl. “I’ve been worritted out of my life since I been here, night afore last. That there lady as I met on the stairs has follered me like my shadder. She ain’t no good, I know, and she gives me the creeps, and if that’s wot the physic’s going to do for me, I’d rayther leave it alone.” “No! no! no! it was not the medicine,” said the Doctor, quickly. “You would have been much worse without it, Hannah! The lady and everybody who worries you will soon disappear, if you will go on with my cure.” “Come in and sit down, and tell us all about the lady,” exclaimed Ricardo, eagerly. “There’s plenty of nice hot tea left in the teapot, and here is some buttered cake! Sit down beside me, Hannah, and have some tea, and whilst you are taking it, we will hear all about this tiresome lady.”