“Don’t matter, my good soul!  Walking is better than riding any fine day, if you have got the strength,” said the doctor briskly.

“Yes, sir; there’s that consolation for them that is not rich and loves to pay their way.  I hope to walk to church next Sunday, please the Lord.  And if a word could be given to Mr. Wiley not to play so on the feelings, it would be a mercy.  He do make such awful faces, and allude to sudden death and accidents and the like, as is enough to give an ailing person a turn.  I said to Mrs. Bunny, ‘Mary,’ I said, ’don’t you go to hear him; leastways, sit by the door if you must, and don’t stop for the sermon:  it might make that impression it would do the babe a mischief.’”

“Go to chapel; it is nearer.  And take Mrs. Bunny with you,” said Mr. Carnegie.

“No, sir.  Mrs. Wiley has been very kind in calling and taking notice since I have been laid up, and one good turn deserves another.  I shall attend church in future, though the doctrine’s so shocking that if folks pondered it the lunatic asylums wouldn’t hold ’em all.  I’ll never believe as the Lord meant us to be threatened with judgment to come, and hell, and all that, till one’s afraid to lie down in one’s bed.  He’d not have let there be an end of us if we didn’t get so mortal tired o’ living.”

“Living is a weariness that men and women bear with unanimous patience, Mrs. Christie—­aches and pains included.”

“So it may be, sir.  We are fearfully and wonderfully made.  A week ago I could not have thought the pleasure it would be to-day to see the sun, and the pretty things in flower, and my boy going out with his color-box.  And not as much physic have you given me, Mr. Carnegie, as would lie on a penny-piece.”

Bessie Fairfax laughed as they rode on, and said, “Nobody changes.  I should be tempted to give Mrs. Christie something horribly nasty for her ingratitude.”

“Nobody changes,” echoed the doctor.  “She will be at her drugs again before the month is out.”

A little beyond the wheelwright’s, Mr. Carnegie pulled up at a spot by the wayside where an itinerant tinker sat in the shade with his brazier hot, doing a good stroke of work on the village kettles and pots:  “Eh, Gampling, here you are again!  They bade me at home look out for you and tell you to call.  There is a whole regiment of cripples to mend.”

“Then let ’em march to Hampton, sir—­they’ll get back some time this side o’ Christmas,” said the tinker, with a surly cunning glance out of the corner of his eye.  “Your women’s so mighty hard to please that I’m not meaning to call again; I prefers to work where I gives satisfaction.”

“I did hear something of a pan new bottomed to mend a hole in its side; but what is that amongst friends?  Mistakes will occur in the best-regulated businesses.”

“You’re likely to know, sir—­there’s a sight o’ folks dropping off quite unaccountable else.  I’m not dependent on one nor another, and what I says I stands to:  I’ll never call at Dr. Carnegie’s back door again while that Irish lass is about his kitchen; she’s give me the rough side of her tongue once, but she won’t do it no more.”