pediency of appearing less prosperous; and considering that Mr. and
Mrs. Ward had themselves made the place, Dr. May thought his proposal
hard-hearted. He went about impressing every one with his confidence
in Henry Ward, and fought successfully at the Board of Guardians to
have him considered as a continuation of his father, instead of
appointing a new union doctor; and he watched with paternal solicitude
that the young man's first return to his practice should be neither too
soon for his own health or his patients' fears; giving him no
exhortation more earnest, nor more thankfully accepted, than that he
was to let no scruple prevent his applying to himself in the slightest
difficulty; calling him in to pauper patients, and privately consulting
in cases which could not be visited gratis. The patronage of Henry
Ward was one of the hobbies that Dr. May specially loved, and he
cantered off upon it with vehemence such as he had hardly displayed for
years.

Aubrey recovered with the tardiness of a weakly constitution, and was
long in even arriving at a drive in the brougham; for Dr. May had set
up a brougham. As long as Hector Ernescliffe's home was at
Stoneborough, driving the Doctor had been his privilege, and the old
gig had been held together by diligent repairs; but when Maplewood
claimed him, and Adams was laid aside by rheumatism, Flora would no
longer be silenced, and preached respectability and necessity. Dr. May
did not admit the plea, unless Adams were to sit inside and drive out
of window; but then he was told of the impropriety of his daughters
going out to dinner in gigs, and the expense of flies. When Flora
talked of propriety in that voice, the family might protest and
grumble, but were always reduced to obedience; and thus Blanche's
wedding had been the occasion of Ethel being put into a hoop, and the
Doctor into a brougham. He was better off under the tyranny than she
was, in spite of the solitude he had bewailed. Young Adams was not the
companion his father had been, and was no loss; and he owned that he
now got through a great deal of reading, and at times a great deal of
sleep; and mourned for nothing but his moon and stars--so romantic a
regret, that Dr. Spencer advised him not to mention it.

After Aubrey's first drives, Dr. Spencer declared that the best way of
invigorating him would be to send him for a month to the sea-side,
while the house could be thoroughly purified before Gertrude's retur