It was thus that he loved to excel his brother practitioners, he who might have indulged in the pride of excelling them both in talent and in energy! We speak now of his early days; but even in his maturer life, the man, though mellowed, was the same.
This was the man who now promised to take to his bosom as his own child a poor bastard whose father was already dead, and whose mother's family was such as the Scatcherds! It was necessary that the child's history should be known to none.

Except to the mother's brother it was an object of interest to no one.

The mother had for some short time been talked of; but now the nine-days' wonder was a wonder no longer.

She went off to her far-away home; her husband's generosity was duly chronicled in the papers, and the babe was left untalked of and unknown.
It was easy to explain to Scatcherd that the child had not lived.
There was a parting interview between the brother and sister in the jail, during which, with real tears and unaffected sorrow, the mother thus accounted for the offspring of her shame.

Then she started, fortunate in her coming fortunes; and the doctor took with him his charge to the new country in which they were both to live.