correcting the mechanical errors in a drawing of
Julia's, and admiring the rare dash and vigour,
and Julia doggedly studying Dr. Whateley's
Logic, with now and then a sigh, when suddenly
a trumpet seemed to articulate in the little hall :
"Mestress Doedd at home?"

The lady rose from her seat, and said with a
smile of pleasure, "I hear a voice."

The door opened, and in darted a hard featured,
grey headed man, laughing and shouting like a
schoolboy broke loose. He cried out, " Aha!
I've found y' out at last." Mrs. Dodd glided to
meet him, and put out both her hands, the palms
downwards, with the prettiest air of ladylike
cordiality; he shook them heartily. "The
vagabins said y' had left the town; but y' had
only flitted from the quay to the subbubs;
'twas a pashint put me on the scint of ye. And
how are y' all these years? an' how's Sawmill?"

"Sawmill! What is that?"

"It's just your husband. Isn't his name
Sawmill?"

"Dear, no! Have you forgotten? — David."

"Ou, ay. I knew it was some Scripcher
Petrarch or another, Daavid, or Naathan, or
Sawmill. He is a fine lad any way — and how is he,
and where is he?"

Mrs. Dodd replied that he was on the seas, but
expect —

"Then I wish him well off 'em, confound 'em
onenall ! Halloa! why, this will be the little girl
grown up int' a wumman while ye look round."

"Yes, my good friend ; and her mother's
darling."

"And she's a bonny lass, I can tell ye. But
no freend to the Dockers, I see."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Dodd, sadly, " looks are
deceitful; she is under medical advice at this
very —"

"Well, that won't hurt her, unless she takes
it." And he burst into a ringing laugh: but,
in the middle of it, stopped dead short, and his
face elongated. "Lordsake, mad'm," said he,
impressively, "mind what y' are at, though;
Barkton's just a trap for fanciful femuls: there's
a n'oily ass called Osmond, and a canting
cutthroat called Stephenson, and a genteel,
cadaveris old assassin called Short, as long as a
maypole; they'd soon take the rose out of Miss
Floree's cheek here. Why, they'd starve Cupid,
an' veneseck Venus, an' blister Pomonee, the
vagabins."

Mrs. Dodd looked a little confused, and
exchanged speaking glances with Julia. However,
she said, calmly, " I have consulted Mr. Osmond,
and Dr. Short; but have not relied on them alone.
I have taken her to Sir William Best. And to
Dr. Chalmers. And to Dr. Kenyon." And she
felt invulnerable behind her phalanx of learning
and reputation.

"Good Hivens!" roared the visitor, " what a
gauntlet o' gabies for one girl to run; and come
out alive! And the picter of health. My
faith, Miss Floree, y' are tougher than ye
look."

"My daughter's name is Julia," observed Mrs.
Dodd, a little haughtily; but instantly recovering
herself, she said, "This is Dr. Sampson, love,
an old friend of your mother's."

"And th' Author an' Invintor of th' great
Chronothairmal Therey o' Midicine, th' Unity
Perriodicity an' Remittency f' all disease," put in
the visitor, with such prodigious swiftness of
elocution, that the words went tumbling over
one another like railway carriages out on
pleasure, and the sentence was a pile of loud,
indistinct syllables.

Julia's lovely eyes dilated at this clishmaclaver,
and she bowed coldly. Dr. Sampson was repulsive
to her: he had revealed in this short interview
nearly all the characteristics of voice,
speech, and manner, she had been taught from
infancy to shun: boisterous, gesticulatory,
idiomatic; and had taken the discourse out of her
mamma's mouth, twice; now Albion Villa was
a Red Indian hut in one respect: here, nobody
interrupted.

Mrs. Dodd had little personal egotism, but she
had a mother's, and could not spare this
opportunity of adding another Doctor to her collection:
so she said, hurriedly, " Will you permit
me to show you what your learned confrères
have prescribed her?" Julia sighed aloud, and
deprecated the subject with earnest furtive
signs; Mrs. Dodd would not see them. Now,
Dr. Sampson was himself afflicted with what I
shall venture to call a mental ailment; to wit, a
furious intolerance of other men's opinions; he
had not even patience to hear them.

"Mai — dear — mad'm," said he, hastily, "when
you've told me their names, that's enough.
Short treats her for liver, Sir William goes in
for lung disease or heart, Chalmers sis it's the
nairves, and Kinyon the mukis membrin; and
I say they are fools and lyres all four."

"Julia!" ejaculated Mrs. Dodd, " this is very
extraordinary."

"No, it is not extraordinary," cried Dr. Sampson,
defiantly: " nothing is extraordinary. And
d'ye think I've known these shallow men thirty
years, and not plumbed 'um?"

"Shallow, my good friend? Excuse me! they
are the ablest men in your own branch of your
own learned profession."

"Th' ablest?! Oh, you mean the money-
makingest: now listen me! our lairned Profession
is a rascally one. It is like a barrel of
beer. What rises to the top?" Here he
paused for a moment, then answered himself
furiously, "THE SCUM!"

This blast blown, he moderated a little.
"Look see!" said he, "up to three or four
thousand a year, a Docker is often an honest man,
and sometimes knows something of midicine;
not much, because it is not taught anywhere;
but if he is making over five thousand, he must
be a rogue, or else a fool: either he has booed
an' booed, and cript an' crawled, int' wholesale
collusion with th' apothecary an' th' aecoucheur
— the two jockeys that drive John Bull's faemily
coach — and they are sucking thepashint togither,
like a leash o' leeches; or else he has turned
spicialist; has tacked his name to some poplar
disorder, real or imaginary; it needn't exist to