“I might as well not be married at all as be a doctor’s wife.  You are never seen out with me, not even to church.  Do behave like a Christian, and come to church with me now.”

Dr. Staines shook his head.

“Why, I wouldn’t miss church for all the world.  Any excitement is better than always moping.  Come over the water with me.  The time Jane and I went, the clergyman read a paper that Mr. Brown had fallen down in a fit.  There was such a rush directly, and I’m sure fifty ladies went out—­fancy, all Mrs. Browns!  Wasn’t that fun?”

“Fun?  I don’t see it.  Well, Rosa, your mind is evidently better adapted to diversion than mine is.  Go you to church, love, and I’ll continue my studies.”

“Then all I can say is, I wish I was back in my father’s house.  Husband! friend! companion!—­I have none.”

Then she burst out crying violently; and, being shocked at what she had said, and at the agony it had brought into her husband’s face, she went off into hysterics; and as his heart would not let him bellow at her, or empty a bucket on her as he would on another patient, she had a good long bout of them:  and got her way, for she broke up his studies for that day, at all events.

Even after the hysterics were got under, she continued to moan and sigh very prettily, with her lovely, languid head pillowed on her husband’s arm; in a word, though the hysterics were real, yet this innocent young person had the presence of mind to postpone entire convalescence, and lay herself out to be petted all day.  But fate willed it otherwise:  while she was sighing and moaning, came to the door a scurrying of feet, and then a sharp, persistent ringing that meant something.  The moaner cocked eye and ear, and said, in her every-day voice, which, coming so suddenly, sounded very droll, “What is that, I wonder?”

Jane hurried to the street-door, and Rosa recovered by magic; and, preferring gossip to hysterics, in an almost gleeful whisper, ordered Christopher to open the door of the study.  The Bijou was so small that the following dialogue rang in their ears:—­

A boy in buttons gasped out, “Oh, if you please, will you ast the doctor to come round directly; there’s a haccident.”

“La, bless me!” said Jane, and never budged.

“Yes, miss.  It’s our missus’s little girl fallen right off an i-chair, and cut her head dreadful, and smothered in blood.”

“La, to be sure!” And she waited steadily for more.

“Ay, and missus she fainted right off; and I’ve been to the regler doctor, which he’s out; and Sarah, the housemaid, said I had better come here; you was only just set up, she said; you wouldn’t have so much to do, says she.”

“That is all she knows,” said Jane.  “Why, our master—­they pulls him in pieces which is to have him fust.”

“What an awful liar!  Oh, you good girl!” whispered Dr. Staines and Rosa in one breath.