"There _is_ saying, madam, humbly begging your pardon, how long my present engagement will last. It will last just as long as I like." Mrs. Heale boiled over with rage: but ere the geyser could explode, Tom had continued in that dogged, nasal Yankee twang which he assumed when he was venomous: "As for the songs, ma'am, there are two ways of making oneself happy in this life; you can judge for yourself which is best. One is to do one's work like a man, and hum a tune, to keep one's spirits up; the other is to let the work go to rack and ruin, and keep one's spirits up, if one is a gentleman, by a little too much brandy;--if one is a lady, by a little too much laudanum." "Laudanum, sir?" almost screamed Mrs. Heale, turning pale as death. "The pint bottle of best laudanum, which I had from town a fortnight ago, ma'am, is now nearly empty, ma'am. I will make affidavit that I have not used a hundred drops, or drunk one. I suppose it was the cat. Cats have queer tastes in the west, I believe. I have heard the cat coming down stairs into the surgery, once or twice after I was in bed; so I set my door ajar a little, and saw her come up again: but whether she had a vial in her paws--" "Oh, sir!" says Mrs. Heale, bursting into tears. "And after the dreadful toothache which I have had this fortnight, which nothing but a little laudanum would ease it; and at my time of life, to mock a poor elderly lady's infirmities, which I did not look for this cruelty and outrage!" "Dry your tears, my dear madam," says Tom, in his most winning tone. "You will always find me the thorough gentleman, I am sure. If I had not been one, it would have been easy enough for me, with my powerful London connections,--though I won't boast,--to set up in opposition to your good husband, instead of saving him labour in his good old age. Only, my dear madam, how shall I get the laudanum-bottle refilled without the doctor's--you understand?" The wretched old woman hurried upstairs, and brought him down a half-sovereign out of her private hoard, trembling like an aspen leaf, and departed. "So--scotched, but not killed. You'll gossip and lie too. Never trust a laudanum-drinker. You'll see me, by the eye of imagination, committing all the seven deadly sins; and by the tongue of inspiration go forth and proclaim the same at the town-head. I can't kill you, and I can't cure you, so I must endure you. What said old Goethe, in all the German I ever cared to recollect:-- "'Der Wallfisch hat doch seine Laus; Muss auch die meine haben.' "Now, then, for Mrs. Penberthy's draughts. I wonder how that pretty schoolmistress goes on. If she were but honest, now, and had fifty thousand pounds--why then, she wouldn't marry me; and so why now, I wouldn't marry she,--as my native Berkshire grammar would render it." CHAPTER VII. LA CORDIFIAMMA.