"I meant to look round in the
course of the forenoon to see how the new tonic agrees with Miss Daisy;
but I may be a little late; I'm summoned in haste to the Manor."
Here he touched his little pony's head with the whip, and, before Mrs.
Jenkins could utter a word of either astonishment or interest, had
turned the corner and was out of sight.
The fashionable disease of nerves had not yet become an epidemic at
Northbury, and Dr. Morris was a little puzzled at the symptoms which his
great patient exhibited. He was proud to speak of Mrs. Bertram as his
"great patient," and told her to her face in rather a fulsome manner
that he considered it the highest possible honor to attend her. He
ordered his favorite tonic of cod liver oil, told her to stay in bed,
and keep on low diet, and, having pocketed his fee drove away.
Mrs. Bertram was outwardly very civil to the Northbury doctor, but when
he departed she scolded Catherine and Mabel for having sent for him,
tore up his prescription, wrote one for herself, which she sent to the
chemist to have made up, and desired Catherine to give her a glass of
port wine from one of a treasured few bottles of a rare vintage which
she had brought with her to Rosendale.
"It was a few days after her visit to the Meadowsweets that Mrs.
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