er ladyship, not
in a very happy tone of voice; "just bad enough. There's been some'at
at the back of his head, rapping, and rapping, and rapping; and if
you don't do something, I'm thinking it will rap him too hard yet."

"Is he in bed?"

"Why, yes, he is in bed; for when he was first took he couldn't very
well help hisself, so we put him to bed. And then, he don't seem to
be quite right yet about the legs, so he hasn't got up; but he's got
that Winterbones with him to write for him, and when Winterbones is
there, Scatcherd might as well be up for any good that bed'll do
him."

Mr Winterbones was confidential clerk to Sir Roger. That is to say,
he was a writing-machine of which Sir Roger made use to do certain
work which could not well be adjusted without some contrivance. He
was a little, withered, dissipated, broken-down man, whom gin and
poverty had nearly burnt to a cinder, and dried to an ash. Mind he
had none left, nor care for earthly things, except the smallest
modicum of substantial food, and the largest allowance of liquid
sustenance. All that he had ever known he had forgotten, except how
to count up figures and to write: the results of his counting and his
writing never stayed with him from one hour to another; nay, not from
one folio to another. Let him, however, be adequately screwed up with
gin, and adequately screwed down by the presence of his master, and
then no amount of counting and writing would be too much for him.
This was Mr Winterbones, confidential clerk to the great Sir Roger
Scatcherd.

"We must send Winterbones away, I take it," said the doctor.

"Indeed, doctor, I wish you would. I wish you'd send him to Bath, or
anywhere else out of the way. There is Scatcherd, he takes brandy;
and there is Winterbones, he takes gin; and it'd puzzle a woman to
say which is worst, master or man."

It will seem from this, that Lady Scatcherd and the doctor were on
very familiar terms as regarded her little domestic inconveniences.

"Tell Sir Roger I am here, will you?" said the doctor.

"You'll take a drop of sherry before you go up?" said the lady.

"Not a drop, thank you," said the doctor.

"Or, perhaps, a little cordial?"

"Not of drop of anything, thank you; I never do, you know."

"Just a thimbleful of this?" said the lady, producing from some
recess under a sideboard a bottle of brandy; "just a thimbleful? It's
what he takes himself."

When Lady Scatcherd found that even this argument