Now about four o’clock in the afternoon the surgeon came to the door; but what surprised Susan was that a man accompanied him whom she only just knew by sight, and who had never been there before—­the turnkey Hodges.  The pair spoke together in a low tone, and Susan, who was looking down from an upper window, could not hear what they said; but the discussion lasted a minute or two before they rang the bell.  Susan came down herself and admitted them:  but as she was leading the way upstairs her aunt suddenly bounced out of the parlor looking unaccountably red, and said: 

“I will go up with them, Susan.”

Susan said, “If you like, aunt,” but felt some little surprise at Mrs. Davies’s brisk manner.

At the sick man’s door Mrs. Davies paused, and said dryly, with a look at Hodges, “Who shall I say is come with you?”

“Mr. Hodges, one of the warders, is come to inquire after his reverence’s health,” replied the surgeon smoothly.

“I must ask him first whether he will receive a stranger.”

“Admit him,” was Mr. Eden’s answer.  The men entered the room, and were welcomed with a kind but feeble smile from the sick man.

“Sit down, Hodges.”

The surgeon felt his pulse and wrote a prescription; for it is a tradition of the elders that at each visit the doctor must do some overt act of medicine.  After this he asked the patient how he felt.

Mr. Eden turned an eloquent look upon him in reply.

“I must speak to Hodges,” said he.  “Come near me, Hodges,” said he in a kind voice, “perhaps I may not have any more opportunities of giving you a word of friendly exhortation.”  Here a short, dissatisfied, contemptuous grunt was heard at the window-seat.

“Did you speak, Mrs. Davies?”

“No, I didn’t,” was the somewhat sharp reply.

“We should improve every occasion, Mrs. Davies, and I want this poor man to know that a dying man may feel happy and hope everything from God’s love and mercy, if he has loved and pitied his brothers and sisters of Adam’s race.”

When he called himself a dying man, Hodges, who was looking uncomfortable and at the floor, raised his head, and the surgeon and he interchanged a rapid look; it was observed, though not by Mr. Eden.

That gentleman, seeing Hodges wear an abashed look, which he misunderstood, and aiming to improve him for the future, not punish him for the past, said, “But first let me thank you for coming to see me,” and with these words he put his hand out of the bed with a kind smile to Hodges.  His gentle intention was roughly interrupted.  Mrs. Davies flung down her work and came like a flaming turkey-cock across the floor in a moment, and seized his arm and flung it back into the bed.

“No, ye don’t! ye shan’t give your hand to any such rubbish.”

“Mrs. Davies!”

“Yes, Mrs. Davies; you don’t know what they’ve come here for—­I overheard ye at the door!  You have got an enemy in that filthy jail, haven’t you, sir?  Well! this man comes from him to see how bad you are—­they were colloguing together backward and forward ever so long, and I heard ’em—­it is not out of any kindness or good will in the world.  Now suppose you march out the way you came in!” screamed Mrs. Davies.