When Bog saw Pet part from the young man at Mr. Minford’s door, his first wild idea was to call on her, quite by accident, in the course of half an hour.  Perhaps she would tell him—­as a piece of startling news—­about her narrow escape from the board, and what the young man said to her.  But Bog was unequal to the dissimulation involved in this plan, and abandoned it.  Then he had a notion of following the young man, and seeing what became of him.  But a sudden and very decided rising of fresh blood to Bog’s cheeks and ears told him that he had played the part of spy long enough.  So Bog determined—­as many grown-up people in graver dilemmas do—­to go home to supper.

Bog found his supper all ready for him, and it was a good one.  For his aunt, although the victim of a chronic rheumatism, had contrived to preserve a sharp appetite from the wreck of her former health, and cooked three meals for herself and two for Bog (who was never home at noon) daily.  She was singularly punctual, too.  Breakfast was always smoking hot on the table at 6 A.M.; and supper (and dinner combined, for Bog) was never a minute behind 5 P.M. in the winter time.  Bog, who had a truly boyish idea of feminine excellencies, considered that this knack of cooking, and this amazing punctuality, were more than an offset for his aunt’s little infirmities of temper, and her everlasting discourse on the rheumatics.

Though the beef hash was good, and the toast nicely browned and buttered, and the tea strong, and the fire burning brightly through the grates of the stove, and the curtains snugly drawn, and everything cheerful and comfortable in Bog’s humble home, the boy was unhappy, and could not eat.

Happily, his aunt was so engrossed with her own physical troubles, that she never noticed indications of ill health in other people.  She held that every other human ailment was unworthy of mention in the presence of her sovereign affliction.  Whenever anybody presumed to speak of their little personal sufferings before her, she said:  “You should thank Heaven you haven’t got the rheumatics,” and would then proceed to give a circumstantial history of her acquaintance with that disease.  Therefore, on this occasion, she was quite unaware that poor Bog sat opposite to her with a pale, dejected face, playing aimlessly on his plate with his knife and fork.  She thought only, and talked only, of her malady, which had been pranking in the oddest manner all day, and had settled, at last, in her “limbs.”  Bog’s aunt had no legs that she would own to.

After supper, Bog heaved a sigh, and said that he would go round to Uncle Ith’s; and asked his aunt if she had any word to send by him.

“Oh, no; nothing partickler,” said she.  “He don’t care about me.”

Uncle Ith, as everybody called him, was Bog’s uncle on his mother’s side.  Uncle Ith and the aunt had a standing difference touching that rheumatism.  Whenever they met—­which was rarely—­Uncle Ith would ask her, with a wink, how she was; and when she candidly told him that she was in a dreadful state, he would laugh at her, and say that half of it was “imagination.”  This indignity he had repeated so often, that, latterly, she scorned to complain in his presence, and bore her anguish in noble silence.