"Feels as if it was a-opening and a-shutting, a-opening and a-shutting, and when I sit down I feel as if I should _bust_." This picturesque description of her sensations--not wholly inconsistent with her figure--gave the clue to Mrs.Jablett's sufferings.

Resisting a frivolous impulse to reassure her as to the elasticity of the human integument, I considered her case in exhaustive detail, coasting delicately round the subject of "unsweetened," and finally sent her away, revived in spirits and grasping a bottle of Mist.

Sodae cum Bismutho from Barnard's big stock-jar.

Then I went back to investigate the Horrible Discovery; but before I could open the paper, another patient arrived (_Impetigo contagiosa_, this time, affecting the "wide and arched-front sublime" of a juvenile Fetter Laner), and then yet another, and so on through the evening until, at last, I forgot the watercress-beds altogether.

It was only when I had purified myself from the evening consultations with hot water and a nail-brush and was about to sit down to a frugal supper, that I remembered the newspaper and fetched it from the drawer of the consulting-room table, where it had been hastily thrust out of sight.