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“Sulphur-water?” Aunt Barbree had used it now and then upon her fruit-trees, to keep away mildew. She doubted Nandy’s taking kindly to it. “He’s easier led, sir, than driven,” she said.

“My good woman,” said the doctor, “you leave him to me. I’ll take up this case for nothing but the honour and glory of it. He shall board and lodge here and live like a fighting-cock, and not a penny-piece to pay. As for curing him–if it’ll give you any confidence, look at my complexion, ma’am. What d’ye think of it?”

“Handsome, sure ‘nough,” said Aunt Barbree.

“Satin, ma’am–complete satin!” said the doctor. “And I’m like that all over.”

“Well to be sure, if Nandy don’t object–” said Aunt Barbree, hurried-like.

Nandy thought that to live for a while in a fine house and be fed like a fighting-cock would be a pleasant change; and so the bargain was struck.

Poor lad, he repented it before the first week was out. He couldn’t abide the mud-baths, which he took in the garden, planted up to the chin in a ring with a dozen old gentlemen, stuck out there like cabbages, and with Clatworthy planted in the middle and haranguing by the hour, sometimes on politics and Napoleon Bonaparte, sometimes on education, but oftenest on his system and the good they ought to be deriving from it. Moreover, though they fed him well enough, according to promise, the sulphur-water acted on his stomach in a way that prevented any lasting satisfaction with his vittles. In short, before the week was out he wanted to run away home; and only one thing hindered him–that he’d fallen in love.

This was the way it happened. Dr. Clatworthy, having notions of his own upon matrimony, and money to carry them out, had picked out a pretty child and adopted her, and set her to school with a Miss St. Maur of Saltash, to be trained up in his principles, till of an age to make him ‘a perfect helpmeet,’ as he called it.

The poor child–she was called Jessica Venning to begin with, but the doctor had rechristened her Sophia–was grown by this time into a young lady of seventeen, pretty and graceful. She could play upon the harp and paint in water-colours, and her needlework was a picture, but not half so pretty a picture as her face. She came from Devonshire, from the edge of the moors behind Newton Abbot, where the folks have complexions all cream-and-roses. She’d a figure like a wand for grace, and an eye half-melting, half-roguish. People might call Clatworthy a crank, or whatever word answered to it in those days: but he had made no mistake in choosing the material to make him a bride–or only this, that the poor girl couldn’t bear the look or the thought of him. Well, the time was drawing on when Clatworthy, according to his plans, was to marry her, and to prepare her for it he had taken to writing her a letter every day, full of duty and mental improvement. Part of Nandy’s business was to walk over with these letters to Saltash. The doctor explained to him that it would open the pores of his skin, and he must wait for an answer. And so it came about that Nandy saw Miss Sophia, and fell over head and ears in love with her.

But towards the end of the second week he felt that he could stand life at Hi-jeen Villa no longer–no, not even for the sake of seeing Miss Sophia daily.

“It’s no use, miss,” he told her very dolefully, as he delivered Friday’s letter; “I’ve a-got to run for it, and I’m going to run for it to-morrow.” He heaved a great sigh.

“But how foolish of you, Nandy!” said Miss Sophia, glancing up from the letter. “When you know it’s doing you so much good!”