cursed him for a fool again. Aunt Becky had said, he thought,
something in which 'to-morrow' occurred, on taking leave of Dangerfield.
'To-morrow!' 'What to-morrow? She spoke low and confidentially, and
seemed excited and a little flushed, and very distrait when she came
back. Altogether, he felt as if Aunt Rebecca was slipping through his
fingers, and would have liked to take that selfish old puppy,
Dangerfield, by the neck and drown him out of hand in the river. But,
notwithstanding the state of his temper, he knew it might be his only
chance to shine pre-eminently at that moment in amiability, wit, grace,
and gallantry, and, though it was up-hill work, he did labour
uncommonly.

When Mr. Dangerfield's spectacles gleamed through the crowd upon Dr.
Sturk, who was thinking of other things beside the music, the angler
walked round forthwith, and accosted that universal genius. Mrs. Sturk
felt the doctor's arm, on which she leaned, vibrate for a second with a
slight thrill--an evidence in that hard, fibrous limb of what she used
to call 'a start'--and she heard Dangerfield's voice over his shoulder.
And the surgeon and the grand vizier were soon deep in talk, and Sturk
brightened up, and looked eager and sagacious, and important, and became
very voluble and impressive, and, leaving his lady to her own devices,
with her maid and children, he got to the other side of the street,
where Nutter, with taciturn and black observation, saw them busy
pointing with cane and finger, and talking briskly as they surveyed
together Dick Fisher's and Tom Tresham's tenements, and the Salmon
House; and then beheld them ascend the steps of Tresham's door, and
overlook the wall on the other side toward the river, and point this way
and that along the near bank, as it seemed to Nutter discussing detailed
schemes of alteration and improvement. Sturk actually pulled out his
pocket-book and pencil, and then Dangerfield took the pencil, and made
notes of what he read to him, on the back of a letter; and Sturk looked
eager and elated, and Dangerfield frowned and looked impressed, and
nodded again and again. _Diruit aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis_,
under his very nose--he unconsulted! It was such an impertinence as
Nutter could ill-digest. It was a studied slight, something like a
public deposition, and Nutter's jealous soul seethed secretly in a
hellbroth of rage and suspicion.

I mentioned that Mistress Sturk felt in that physician's arm the