I fancy I see you (with your impatience of letter-writing at any length) looking to the end.

Don't be alarmed.

I am writing to your brother Lemuel by this mail, and I have little time to spare." Was this "serious case of illness"-- described as being "accompanied by shocking circumstances"-- a case of disease of the brain?
There was the question, proposed by Benjulia's inveterate suspicion of Ovid! The bare doubt cost him the loss of a day's work.

He reviled poor Mr.Morphew as "a born idiot" for not having plainly stated what the patient's malady was, instead of wasting paper on smooth sentences, encumbered by long words.

If Ovid had alluded to his Canadian patient in his letters to his mother, his customary preciseness of language might be trusted to relieve Benjulia's suspense.