Dodd, with an air of nonchalance, replied to the effect that Dr.
Sampson was not her offspring, and so she was not bound to correct his
eccentricities. "And I suppose," said she, languidly, "we must accept
these extraordinary people as we find them. But that is no reason why
_you_ should say 'P's and Q's,' darling."
That day her hospitable board was spread over a trap. Blessed with an
oracle irrelevantly fluent, and dumb to the point, she had asked him to
dinner with maternal address. He could not be on his guard eternally;
sooner or later, through inadvertence, or in a moment of convivial
recklessness, or in a parenthesis of some grand Generality, he would cure
her child: or, perhaps, at his rate of talking, would wear out all his
idle themes, down to the very "well-being of mankind;" and them Julia's
mysterious indisposition would come on the blank tapis. With these secret
hopes she presided at the feast, all grace and gentle amity. Julia, too,
sat down with a little design, but a very different one, viz., of being
chilly company; for she disliked this new acquaintance, and hated the
science of medicine.
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