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Rh gazing unconsciously at the counterpane. At last he gave a deep sigh, and then he said, 'Scatcherd, you must be more particular in this. If I am to have anything to do with it, you must, indeed, be more explicit.'

'Why, how the deuce can I be more explicit? Isn't her eldest living child plain enough, whether he be Jack, or she be Gill?'

'What did your lawyer say to this, Scatcherd?'

'Lawyer! You don't suppose I let my lawyer know what I was putting. No; I got the form and the paper, and all that from him, and had him here, in one room, while Winterbones and I did it in another. It's all right enough. Though Winterbones wrote it, he did it in such a way he did not know what he was writing.'

The doctor sat a while longer, still looking at the counterpane, and then got up to depart. 'I'll see you again soon,' said he; 'to-morrow, probably.'

'To-morrow!' said Sir Roger, not at all understanding why Dr. Thorne should talk of returning so soon. 'To-morrow! why I ain't so bad as that man, am I? If you come so often as that you'll ruin me.'

'Oh, not as a medical man; not as that; but about this will, Scatcherd. I must think it over; I must, indeed.'

'You need not give yourself the least trouble in the world about my will till I'm dead; not the least. And who knows—may be, I may be settling your affairs yet; eh, doctor? looking after your niece when you're dead and gone, and getting a husband for her, eh? Ha! ha! ha!'

And then, without further speech, the doctor went his way.

doctor got on his cob and went his way, returning duly to Greshamsbury. But, in truth, as he went he hardly knew whither he was going, or what he was doing. Sir Roger had hinted that the cob would be compelled to make up for lost time by extra exertion on the road; but the cob had never been permitted to have his own way as to pace more satisfactorily than on the present occasion. The doctor, indeed, hardly knew that he was on horseback, so completely was he enveloped in the cloud of his own thoughts.

In the first place, that alternative which it had become him to put before the baronet as one unlikely to occur—that of the