Christie Johnstone | Page 7

the same, from their ankles up to their ears, and down again
to their morals; it is your eyes that are sunk deeper into your head. Hum!

no horses, no vices, no dancers, no yacht; you confound one's notions
of nobility, and I ought to know them, for I have to patch them all up a
bit just before they go to the deuce."
"But I have, Doctor Aberford."
"What!"
"A yacht! and a clipper she is, too."
"Ah!--(Now I've got him.)"
"In the Bay of Biscay she lay half a point nearer the wind than Lord
Heavyjib."
"Oh! bother Lord Heavyjib, and his Bay of Biscay."
"With all my heart, they have often bothered me."
"Send her round to Granton Pier, in the Firth of Forth."
"I will, sir."
"And write down this prescription." And away he walked again,
thinking the prescription.
"Saunders," appealed his master.
"Saunders be hanged."
"Sir!" said Saunders, with dignity, "I thank you."
"Don't thank me, thank your own deserts," replied the modern
Chesterfield. "Oblige me by writing it yourself, my lord, it is all the
bodily exercise you will have had to-day, no doubt."
The young viscount bowed, seated himself at a desk, and wrote from
dictation:

"DR. ABERFORD'S PRESCRIPTION.
"Make acquaintance with all the people of low estate who have time to
be bothered with you; learn their ways, their minds, and, above all,
their troubles."
"Won't all this bore me?" suggested the writer.
"You will see. Relieve one fellow-creature every day, and let Mr.
Saunders book the circumstances."
"I shall like this part," said the patient, laying down his pen. "How
clever of you to think of such things; may not I do two sometimes?"
"Certainly not; one pill per day. Write, Fish the herring! (that beats
deer-stalking.) Run your nose into adventures at sea; live on tenpence,
and earn it. Is it down?"
"Yes, it is down, but Saunders would have written it better."
"If he hadn't he ought to be hanged," said the Aberford, inspecting the
work. "I'm off, where's my hat? oh, there; where's my money? oh, here.
Now look here, follow my prescription, and
You will soon have Mens sana in corpore sano; And not care whether
the girls say yes or say no;
neglect it, and--my gloves; oh, in my pocket--you will be _blase'_ and
_ennuye',_ and (an English participle, that means something as bad);
God bless you!"
And out he scuttled, glided after by Saunders, for whom he opened and
shut the street door.
Never was a greater effect produced by a doctor's visit; patient and
physician were made for each other. Dr. Aberford was the specific for
Lord Ipsden. He came to him like a shower to a fainting strawberry.
Saunders, on his return, found his lord pacing the apartment.

"Saunders," said he, smartly, "send down to Gravesend and order the
yacht to this place--what is it?"
"Granton Pier. Yes, my lord."
"And, Saunders, take clothes, and books, and violins, and telescopes,
and things--and me--to Euston Square, in an hour."
"Impossible,' my lord," cried Saunders, in dismay. "And there is no
train for hours."
His master replied with a hundred-pound note, and a quiet, but
wickedish look; and the prince of gentlemen's gentleman had all the
required items with him, in a special train, within the specified time,
and away they flashed, northward.
CHAPTER II.
IT is said that opposite characters make a union happiest; and perhaps
Lord Ipsden, diffident of himself, felt the value to him of a creature so
different as Lady Barbara Sinclair; but the lady, for her part, was not so
diffident of herself, nor was she in search of her opposite. On the
contrary, she was waiting patiently to find just such a man as she was,
or fancied herself, a woman.
Accustomed to measure men by their characters alone, and to treat with
sublime contempt the accidents of birth and fortune, she had been a
little staggered by the assurance of this butterfly that had proposed to
settle upon her hand--for life.
In a word, the beautiful writer of the fatal note was honestly romantic,
according to the romance of 1848, and of good society; of course she
was not affected by hair tumbling back or plastered down forward, and
a rolling eye went no further with her than a squinting one.
Her romance was stern, not sickly. She was on the lookout for iron
virtues; she had sworn to be wooed with great deeds, or never won; on
this subject she had thought much, though not enough to ask herself

whether great deeds are always to be got at, however disposed a lover
may be.
No matter; she kept herself in reserve for some earnest man, who was
not to come flattering and fooling to her, but look another way and do