month; and I would not have you cross the Channel till late in April."
"If you had seen the breakfast I eat this morning, my good lady, you would not have talked about months, and airs, and that nonsense; 'tis the cant of the medical men; and who can blame them for using it, when it puts money in the purse? Do you think Mrs. Margaret Hales ever shut herself up in a room, and stuffed the keyhole with paper, as Helen has done? Not she, indeed!"
"But then she has no complaint whatever, which makes all the difference."
"She has seventy-five years on her shoulders—complaint enough, in all conscience; she has refused many an offer, I'll be bound, before I was born, for she must have been very pretty. If one could be like her, really many persons would not object to becoming old women."
"I will tell her what you say, and see if it will get a smile out of her; I am going there now, and will, if you please, take Georgiana's arm, as they will go to Reading to night."
"By all means; offer my warmest congratulations; tell them, their first letter will set me at work to kill the fatted calf; but they must expect the wanderer to be in a sadly reduced state, and had better keep him a while in Devonshire. Should I give up going to Paris, as my doctor advises, I
