e same housekeeper, she spent the
happiest moments of her life.

"Oh laws! now, Hannah, what shall we do?"

"Send 'un up at once to master, my lady! let John take 'un up."

"There'll be such a row in the house, Hannah; I know there will."

"But sure-ly didn't he send for 'un? Let the master have the row
himself, then; that's what I'd do, my lady," added Hannah, seeing
that her ladyship still stood trembling in doubt, biting her
thumb-nail.

"You couldn't go up to the master yourself, could you now, Hannah?"
said Lady Scatcherd in her most persuasive tone.

"Why no," said Hannah, after a little deliberation; "no, I'm afeard I
couldn't."

"Then I must just face it myself." And up went the wife to tell her
lord that the physician for whom he had sent had come to attend his
bidding.

In the interview which then took place the baronet had not indeed
been violent, but he had been very determined. Nothing on earth, he
said, should induce him to see Dr Fillgrave and offend his dear old
friend Dr Thorne.

"But Roger," said her ladyship, half crying, or rather pretending to
cry in her vexation, "what shall I do with the man? How shall I get
him out of the house?"

"Put him under the pump," said the baronet; and he laughed his
peculiar low guttural laugh, which told so plainly of the havoc which
brandy had made in his throat.

"That's nonsense, Roger; you know I can't put him under the pump. Now
you are ill, and you'd better see him just for five minutes. I'll
make it all right with Dr Thorne."

"I'll be d---- if I do, my lady." All the people about Boxall Hill
called poor Lady Scatcherd "my lady" as if there was some excellent
joke in it; and, so, indeed, there was.

"You know you needn't mind nothing he says, nor yet take nothing he
sends: and I'll tell him not to come no more. Now do 'ee see him,
Roger."

But there was no coaxing Roger over now, or indeed ever: he was a
wilful, headstrong, masterful man; a tyrant always though never
a cruel one; and accustomed to rule his wife and household as
despotically as he did his gangs of workmen. Such men it is not easy
to coax over.

"You go down and tell him I don't want him, and won't see him, and
that's an end of it. If he chose to earn his money, why didn't he
come yesterday when he was sent for? I'm well now, and don't want
him; and what's more, I won't have him. Winterbones, lock the door."

So Winterbones, who during this interview had been at work at his