poor to fancy themselves ill, if there was a doctor at hand. Oh, pray
let us have none of that tribe at Sanditon: we go on very well as we are.
There is the sea, and the downs, and my milch asses: and I have told Mrs.
Whitby that if anybody enquires for a chamber horse, they may be supplied
at a fair rate (poor Mr. Hollis's chamber horse, as good as new); and
what can people want more? I have lived seventy good years in the world,
and never took physic, except twice: and never saw the face of a doctor
in all my life on my own account; and I really believe if my poor dear
Sir Harry had never seen one neither, he would have been alive now. Ten
fees, one after another, did the men take who sent him out of the world.
I beseech you, Mr. Parker, no doctors here.'

This lady's character comes out more strongly in a conversation with Mr.
Parker's guest, Miss Charlotte Heywood. Sir Edward Denham with his
sister Esther and Clara Brereton have just left them.

'Charlotte accepted an invitation from Lady Denham to remain with her on
the terrace, when the others adjourned to the library. Lady Denham, like
a true great lady, talked, and talked only of her own concerns, and
Charlotte listened. Taking hold of Charlotte's arm with the ease of one
who felt that any notice from her was a favour, and communicative from
the same sense of importance, or from a natural love of talking, she
immediately said in a tone of great satisfaction, and with a look of arch
sagacity:--

'Miss Esther wants me to invite her and her brother to spend a week with
me at Sanditon House, as I did last summer, but I shan't. She has been
trying to get round me every way with her praise of this and her praise
of that; but I saw what she was about. I saw through it all. I am not
very easily taken in, my dear.'