Chapter 45

Lucilla's Journal, concluded



September 4th (continued).

Arrived in the drawing-room, Grosse placed me in a chair near the window. He leaned forward, and looked at me close; he drew back, and looked at me from a distance; he took out his magnifying glass, and had a long stare through it at my eyes; he felt my pulse; dropped my wrist as if it disgusted him; and, turning to the window, looked out in grim silence, without taking the slightest notice of any one in the room.

My aunt was the first person who spoke, under these discouraging circumstances.

"Mr. Grosse!" she said sharply. "Have you nothing to tell me about your patient to-day? Do you find Lucilla----"

He turned suddenly round from the window, and interrupted Miss Batchford without the slightest ceremony.

"I find her gone back, back, back!" he growled, getting louder and louder at each repetition of the word. "When I sent her here, I said--'Keep her comfortable-easy.' You have not kept her comfortable-easy. Something has turned her poor little mind topsy-turvies. What is it? Who is it?" He looked fiercely backwards and forwards between Oscar and my aunt--then turned my way, and putting his heavy hands on my shoulders, looked down at me with an odd angry kind of pity in his face. "My childs is melancholick; my childs is ill," he went on. "Where is our goot-dear Pratolungo? What did you tell me about her, my little-lofe, when I last saw you? You said she had gone aways to see her Papa. Send a telegrams--and say I want Pratolungo here."

At the repetition of Madame Pratolungo's name, Miss Batchford rose to her feet and stood (apparently) several inches higher than usual.

"Am I to understand, sir," inquired the old lady, "that your extraordinary language is intended to cast a reproach on my conduct towards my niece?"

"You are to understand this, madam. In the face of the goot sea-airs, Miss your niece is fretting herself ill. I sent her to this place, for to get a rosy face, for to put on a firm flesh. How do I find her? She has got nothing, she has put on nothing--she is emphatically flabby-pale. In this fine airs, she can be flabby-pale but for one reason. She is fretting herself about something or anodder. Is fretting herself goot for her eyes? Ho-damn-damn! it is as bad for her eyes as bad can be. If you can do no better than this, take her aways back again. You are wasting your moneys in this lodgment here."

My aunt addressed herself to me in her grandest manner.

"You will understand, Lucilla, that it is impossible for me to notice such language as this in any other way than by leaving the room. If you can bring Mr. Grosse to his senses, inform him that I will receive his apologies and explanations in writing." Pronouncing these lofty words with her