“Why, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Maylie. “I would not have had them here, for the world.”

“All I know is,” said Mr. Losberne, at last: sitting down with a kind of desperate calmness, “that we must try and carry it off with a bold face. The object is a good one, and that must be our excuse. The boy has strong symptoms of fever upon him, and is in no condition to be talked to any more; that’s one comfort. We must make the best of it; and if bad be the best, it is no fault of ours. Come in!”

“Well, master,” said Blathers, entering the room followed by his colleague, and making the door fast, before he said any more. “This warn’t a put-up thing.”

“And what the devil’s a put-up thing?” demanded the doctor, impatiently.