‘Why, mother dear,’ cried Mag suddenly, ’what the plague ails your pretty face?  Did you ever see the like?  It’s for all the world like a bad batter pudding!  I lay a crown, now, that was a bill.  Was it a bill?  Come now, Mullikins (a term of endearment for mother).  Show us the note.  It is too bad, you poor dear, old, handsome, bothered angel, you should be fretted and tormented out of your looks and your health, by them dirty shopkeepers’ bills, when a five-pound note, I’m certain sure, ’id pay every mothers skin o’ them, and change to spare!’ And the elegant Magnolia, whose soiclainet and Norwich crape petticoat were unpaid for, darted a glance of reproach full upon the major’s powdered head, the top of which was cleverly presented to receive it, as he swallowed in haste his cup of tea, and rising suddenly, for his purse had lately suffered in the service of the ladies, and wanted rest—­

‘Tis nothing at all but that confounded egg,’ he said, raising that untasted delicacy a little towards his nose.  ’Why the divil will you go on buying our eggs from that dirty old sinner, Poll Delany?’ And he dropped it from its cup plump into the slop-basin.

‘A then maybe it was,’ said poor Mrs. Mac, smiling as well as she could; ‘but I’m better.’

‘No you’re not, Mullikins,’ interposed Magnolia impatiently.  ’There’s Toole crossing the street, will I call him up?’

’Not for the world, Maggy darling.  I’d have to pay him, and where’s the money to come from?’

The major did not hear, and was coughing besides; and recollecting that he had a word for the adjutant’s ear, took his sword off the peg where it hung, and his cocked hat, and vanished in a twinkling.

‘Pay Toole, indeed! nonsense, mother,’ and up went the window.

‘Good-morrow to your nightcap, doctor!’

’And the top of the morning to you, my pretty Miss chattering Mag, up on your perch there,’ responded the physician.

’And what in the world brings you out this way at breakfast time, and where are you going?—­Oh! goosey, goosey gander, where do you wander?’

‘Up stairs, if you let me,’ said Toole, with a flourish of his hand, and a gallant grin, ‘and to my lady’s chamber.’

‘And did you hear the news?’ demanded Miss Mag.

The doctor glanced over his shoulder, and seeing the coast clear, he was by this time close under the little scarlet geranium pots that stood on the window-sill.

‘Miss Chattesworth, eh?’ he asked, in a sly, low tone.

’Oh, bother her, no.  Do you remember Miss Anne Marjoribanks, that lodged in Doyle’s house, down there, near the mills, last summer, with her mother, the fat woman with the poodle, and the—­don’t you know?’

‘Ay, ay; she wore a flowered silk tabby sacque, on band days,’ said Toole, who had an eye and a corner in his memory for female costume, ’a fine showy—­I remember.’  ‘Well, middling:  that’s she.’