"Why so
saturnine?" And then a third time, and more playfully, as though it were
a poetical quotation, "Why?--tell me why?"--which was indeed imitated
from one of Penelope's songs, "Where, tell me where,"--referring to a
Highland laddie.

The Doctor glared at him. Then he took him by the button and led him
apart from the others. "Sir," he said, frowning, "you can take what
stand you like in this matter, _you_ are a clergyman, and a certain
_oatmealish_ view of things becomes your cloth; but I, sir, am a man of
the world, and must act accordingly!" And leaving the parson to digest
that, he returned to his post at the door.

When Betty came back from her interview with Aunt Dinah she brought with
her a piece of hot corn-bread; "I thought you might like a taste of it,"
she said. Mrs. Kirby was very glad to get it; she sat breaking off small
fragments and eating them carefully--Mrs. Rutherford would have said
that she nibbled. "Yes, the _sweetest_ thing!" continued Betty, seating
herself broadly in an arm-chair, and searching again for her
handkerchief. "Let me see--you and the Doctor started down here about
midnight, didn't you? Well, of course we didn't feel like going to bed,
of course, not knowing _where_ our poor dear child might be, and so I
went over and sat with Penelope Moore; and Mr. Moore _very_ often went
down to the gate, and indeed a good deal of the time he stayed out on
the plaza; Telano's coming up from here had let everybody know what had
happened, and many others sat up besides ourselves, and some of the
servants got together with torches and went out on the barren to look,
only Mr. Moore wouldn't organize a _regular_ search, because he supposed
that was being done here under the Doctor's directions, he never dreamed
you hadn't got here at all! At length, when it was nearly three, Mr.
Moore came in and said that he thought we had better go to bed and get
what sleep we _could_; that we should only be _perfectly_ useless and
exhausted the next day if we sat up all night" (here little Mrs. Kirby
heaved a noiseless sigh); "and so I went home, and _did_ go to bed, but
more to occupy the time than anything else, for of course it was simply
_impossible_ to sleep, anxious as I was. But I must have dropped off,
after all, I reckon, because it was just dawn when Cynthy came up to
tell me that Mr. Moore was down-stairs; I _rushed_ down, and he said
that Marcos Finish, the livery-stable man, had been to the rectory