“O, your mamma, Fred!” said Queen Bee.

“O yes, mamma, of course!  But then she is getting fagged.”

“Mamma says she is quite unhappy to have kept him so long from his work in London,” said Henrietta; “but I do not know what we should have done without him.”

“I do not know what we shall do now,” said Fred, in a languid and doleful tone.

The Queen Bee, thinking this a capital opportunity, spoke with almost alarmed eagerness, “O yes, Fred, you will get on famously; you will enjoy having my mamma so much, and you are so much better already, and Philip Carey manages you so well—­”

“Manages!” said Fred; “ay, and I’ll tell you how, Queenie; just as the man managed his mare when he fed her on a straw a day.  I believe he thinks I am a ghool, and can live on a grain of rice.  I only wish he knew himself what starvation is.  Look here! you can almost see the fire through my hand, and if I do but lift up my head, the whole room is in a merry-go-round.  And that is nothing but weakness; there is nothing else on earth the matter with me, except that I am starved down to the strength of a midge!”

“Well, but of course he knows,” said Busy Bee; “Papa says he has had an excellent education, and he must know.”

“To be sure he does, perfectly well:  he is a sharp fellow, and knows how to keep a patient when he has got one.”

“How can you talk such nonsense, Fred?  One comfort is, that it is a sign you are getting well, or you would not have spirits to do it.”

“I am talking no nonsense,” said Fred, sharply; “I am as serious as possible.”

“But you can’t really think that if Philip was capable of acting in such an atrocious way, that papa would not find it out, and the other doctor too?”

“What! when that man gets I don’t know how many guineas from mamma every time he comes, do you think that it is for his interest that I should get well?”

“My dear Fred,” interposed his sister, “you are exciting yourself, and that is so very bad for you.”

“I do assure you, Henrietta, you would find it very little exciting to be shut up in this room with half a teaspoonful of wishy-washy pudding twice a day, and all just to fill Philip Carey’s pockets!  Now, there was old Clarke at Rocksand, he had some feeling for one, poor old fellow; but this man, not the slightest compunction has he; and I am ready to kick him out of the room when I hear that silky voice of his trying to be gen-tee-eel, and condoling; and those boots—­O!  Busy Bee! those boots! whenever he makes a step I always hear them say, ’O what a pretty fellow I am!’”

“You seem to be very merry here, my dears,” said Aunt Mary, coming in; “but I am afraid you will tire yourself, Freddy; I heard your voice even before I opened the door.”

Fred was silent, a little ashamed, for he had sense enough not absolutely to believe all that he had been saying, and his mother, sitting down, began to talk to the visitor, “Well, my little Queen, we have seen very little of you of late, but we shall be very sorry to lose you.  I suppose your mamma will have all your letters, and Henrietta must not expect any, but we shall want very much to know how you get on with Aunt Susan and her little dog.”