Page:A New England Tale.djvu/239

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228
A NEW-ENGLAND TALE.

shocked by his unsentimental involuntary vigil, she overlooked it, and succeeded in palming him off on the old lady as a foreign physician, who had performed sundry marvellous cures in his western progress. Mrs. Wilson submitted her disease to his prescription. In the meanwhile, he, poor wretch, as if a judgment had come upon him for his sins, has been really and seriously sick, in consequence of the exposure to the dampness of a September night, in his nankins; and Elvira has been watching and nursing him according to the best and most approved precedents to be found in ballads and romances."

"Is it possible," asked Jane, "that aunt Wilson should be imposed on for so long a time? Elvira is ingenious, and ready, but she is not a match for her quick-sighted mother."

"No, so it has proved in this case. The doctor became better, and the patient worse; his prescriptions have had a dreadful effect upon the scrofula; and as the pain increased, your aunt became irritable and suspicious. Last evening, she overheard a conversation between the hopeful lovers, which revealed the whole truth to her."

"And what has she done?"

"What could she do, my dear, but turn the good for nothing fellow out of doors, and exhaust her wrath upon Elvira. The dreadful news she received from David late last evening, must have driven even this provoking affair out of her troubled mind. But," said Mrs. Harvey, rising and going to the window, "who is that coming through