But after that new troubles came on.  The doctor had gone downstairs into his study to make up some of the time which he had lost, and had just seated himself at his desk, when Janet, without announcing herself, burst into the room; and Bridget, dissolved in hysterical tears, with her apron to her eyes, appeared behind the senior domestic.

‘Please, sir,’ said Janet, driven by excitement much beyond her usual place of speaking, and becoming unintentionally a little less respectful than usual, ’please sir, that ’ere young man must go out of this here house; or else no respectable young ’ooman can’t stop here; no, indeed, sir; and we be sorry to trouble you, Dr Thorne; so we be.’

‘What young man?  Sir Louis?’ asked the doctor.

‘Man!’ sobbed Bridget from behind.  ’He an’t no man, no nothing like a man.  If Tummas had been here, he wouldn’t have dared; so he wouldn’t.’  Thomas was the groom, and, if all Greshamsbury reports were true, it was probable, that on some happy, future day, Thomas and Bridget would become one flesh and one bone.

‘Please sir,’ continued Janet, ’there’ll be bad work here if there ’ere young man doesn’t quit this here house this very night, and I’m sorry to trouble you, doctor; and so I am.  But Tom, he be given to fight a’most for nothin’.  He’s out now; but if that there young man be’s here when Tom comes home, Tom will be punching his head; I know he will.’

’He wouldn’t stand by and see a poor girl put upon; no more he wouldn’t,’ said Bridget, through her tears.

After many futile inquiries, the doctor ascertained that Mr Jonah had expressed some admiration for Bridget’s youthful charms, and had, in the absence of Janet, thrown himself at the lady’s feet in a manner which had not been altogether pleasing to her.  She had defended herself stoutly and loudly, and in the middle of the row Janet had come down.

‘And where is he now?’ said the doctor.

‘Why, sir,’ said Janet, ’the poor girl was so put about that she did give him one touch across the face with the rolling-pin, and he be all bloody now, in the back kitchen.’  At hearing this achievement of hers thus spoken of, Bridget sobbed more hysterically than ever; but the doctor, looking at her arm as she held her apron to her face, thought in his heart that Joe must have had so much the worst of it, that there could be no possible need for the interference of Thomas the groom.

And such turned out to be the case.  The bridge of Joe’s nose was broken; and the doctor had to set it for him in a little bedroom at the village public-house, Bridget having positively refused to go to bed in the same house with so dreadful a character.

’Quiet now, or I’ll be serving thee the same way; thee see I’ve found the trick of it.’  The doctor could not but hear so much as he made into his own house by the back door, after finishing his surgical operation.  Bridget was recounting to her champion the fracas that had occurred; and he, as was so natural, was expressing his admiration for her valour.