Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country | Page 7

Go to the fresh mountain air; that is all the medicine you need. Don't go too high up, but stay there six weeks at least. Have you any preference as to the place? No? Well, set yourself to thinking and I will do the same, and to-morrow I shall call again to find you ready for the journey."
With this off started the doctor, but Aunt Ninette would not let him escape so easily. She followed close at his heels with a whole torrent of questions, which she asked over and over again, and she would have an answer. The doctor had fairly deserved this attack, by his astounding prescription. His little game of snapping it suddenly upon them, and then quickly making his escape, had not succeeded; he lost three times as much time outside the door as if he had staid quietly in the room. When at last Aunt Ninette returned to her husband, there he sat at his desk again, writing as usual!
"My dear Titus," cried the good woman really in great astonishment, "is it possible that you did not hear what we are ordered to do? To drop everything and go away at once, and stay away for six weeks! And where? We have not an idea where! And there's no way of knowing who our neighbors will be! It is terrible, and there you sit and write as if there were nothing else to be done in the world!"
"My love, it is exactly because I must go away so soon, that I wish to make the most of the little time I have left," said Uncle Titus, and he went on with his writing.
"My dear Titus, your way of accepting the unexpected is most admirable, but this must be talked over, I assure you. The consequences may be very serious, and the matter must not be lightly treated. Do think at once where we are to go! Aunt Ninette spoke very impressively.
"Oh, it makes no difference where we go, if it is only quiet, and out in the country some where," said the good man, as he calmly continued his writing.
"Of course, that is the very thing" said his wife, "to find a quiet house, not full of people nor in a noisy neighborhood. We might happen on a school close by, or a mill, or a waterfall. There are so many of those dreadful things in Switzerland. Or some noisy factory, or a market place, always full of country folk, all the people of the whole canton pouring in there together and making a terrible uproar. But I have an idea, my dearest Titus, I have thought of a way to settle it. I shall write to an old uncle of my brother's wife. You remember the family used to live in Switzerland; I am sure I can find out from him just what it is best for us to do."
"That seems to me rather a round-about way," said her husband, "and if I remember right the family had some unpleasant experiences in Switzerland, and are not likely to have kept up any connection with it."
"Oh, let me see to that; I will take care that all is as it should be, my dear Titus," said aunt Ninette decidedly, and off she went, and without more delay wrote and dispatched a letter to her brother's wife's uncle. This done, she hurried away to Dora's sewing teacher, who was a most respectable woman, and arranged that while they were in Switzerland, Dora should spend the days with her, going to school as usual in the morning and sewing all the afternoon, and that the woman should go home with Dora to pass the nights.
Dora was informed of this plan when she came home that evening. She received the news in silence, and after supper in silence went to her little attic room. There as she sat upon her little bed, she realized fully what her life would be when her uncle and aunt had gone away, and as she compared it sadly with the happy companionship of her dear father, her sorrow and solitude seemed too terrible to bear, and she hid her face in her hands and gave way to bitter tears. Her uncle and aunt might die too, she thought, and she should be left alone with no one to care for her, no one in the world to whom she belonged, and nothing to do but to sit forever sewing on endless shirts. For ever and ever! for she knew she must earn her living by sewing. Well, she was quite willing to do that; but oh! not to be left all alone.
The poor child was so wholly absorbed in these painful thoughts, as they passed again and again through her mind, that