Dr. Mayhew received me with a very cunning smile and a facetious observation.

“Well, Master Stukely, this hot weather has been playing the deuce with us all.  Only think of little puss being attacked with your complaint, the very day you were here suffering so much from it, and my getting a touch myself.”

I smiled.

“Yes, sir, it is very easy to laugh at the troubles of other men, but I can tell you this is a very disagreeable epidemic.  Severe times these for maids and bachelors.  I shall settle in life now, sooner than I intended.  I have fallen in love with puss my self.”

I did not smile.

“To be sure, I am old enough to be her father, but so much the better for her.  No man should marry till fifty.  Your young fellows of twenty don’t know their own mind—­don’t understand what love means—­all blaze and flash, blue fire and sky-rocket—­out in a minute.  Eh, what do you say, Stukely?”

“Are you aware, sir, that I have left the parsonage?”

“To be sure I am; and a pretty kettle of fish you have made of it.  Instead of treating love as a quiet and respectable undertaking, as I mean to treat it—­instead of simmering your love down to a gentlemanly respect and esteem, as I mean to simmer it—­and waiting patiently for the natural consequences of things, as I mean to wait—­you must, like a boy as you are, have it all out in a minute, set the whole house by the ears, and throw yourself out of it without rhyme or reason, or profit to any body.  Now, sit down, and tell me what you mean to do with yourself?”

“I intend to go to London, sir.”

“Does your father live there?”

“I have no father, sir.”

“Well—­your mother?”

“She is dead, too.  I have one friend there—­I shall go to him until I find occupation.”

“You naughty boy!  How I should like to whip you!  What right had you to give away so good a chance as you have had?  You have committed a sin, sir—­yes, you may look—­you have, and a very grievous one.  I speak as I think.  You have been flying in the face of Providence, and doing worse than hiding the talent which was bestowed upon you for improvement.  Do you think I should have behaved so at your age?  Do you think any man in the last generation out of a madhouse would have done it?  Here’s your march of education!”

I bowed to Doctor Mayhew, and wished him good-morning.

“No, thank you, sir,” answered the physician, “if I didn’t mean to say a little more to you, I shouldn’t have spoken so much already.  We must talk these matters over quietly.  You may as well stay a few days with your friend in the country as run off directly to the gentleman in London.  Besides, now I have made my mind up so suddenly to get married, I don’t know soon I may be called upon to undergo the operation—­I beg the lady’s pardon—­the awful ceremony.  I shall want a bride’s-man, and you wouldn’t make a bad one by any means.”