I am away
from her--gif me your sympathies: I so much want it--I sweat with
anxiousness for young Miss. Your damn-mess-fix about those two brodders
is a sort of perpetual blisters on my mind. Instead of snoring peaceably
all night in my nice big English beds, I roll wide awake on my pillows,
fidgeting for Feench. I am here to-day before my time. For what? For to
try her eyes--you think? Goot Madam, you think wrong! It is not her eyes
which troubles me. Her eyes will do. It is You--and the odders at your
rectory-place. You make me nervous-anxious about my patients. I am afraid
some of you will let the mess-fix of those brodder-twins find its way to
her pretty ears, and turn her poor little mind topsy-turvies when I am
not near to see to it in time. Will you let her be comfortable-easy for
two months more? Ach Gott! if I could only be certain-sure of _that,_ I
might leave those weak new eyes of hers to cure themselves, and go my
ways back to London again."

I had intended to remonstrate with him pretty sharply for taking Lucilla
to Browndown. After what he had now said, it was useless to attempt
anything of that sort--and doubly useless to hope that he would let me
extricate myself from my difficulties by letting me tell her the truth.

"Of course you are the best judge," I said. "But you little know what
these precautions of yours cost the unfortunate people who are left to
carry them out."

He took me up sharply at those words.

"You shall judge for yourself," he said, "if it is not worth the cost. If
her eyes satisfy me--Feench shall learn to see to-day. You shall stand
by, you obstinate womans, and judge if it is goot to add shock and
agitation to the exhaustions and irritabilities and bedevilments of all
sorts which our poor Miss must suffer in learning to see, after being
blind for all her life. No more of it now, till we get to the
rectory-place." By way of changing the subject for the present, he put a
question to me which I felt it necessary to answer with some caution.
"How is my nice boys?--my bright-clever Nugent?" he asked.

"Very well."

There I stopped, not feeling at all sure of the ground I was treading on.

"Mind this!" Grosse went on. "My bright-boy-Nugent keeps her
comfortable-easy. My bright-boy-Nugent is worth all the rest of you
togedder. I insist on his making his visits to young Miss at the
rectory-place, in spite of that windy-talky-puff-bag-Feench-father of
hers. I say positively--Nugent