"All nonsense, Hennessey, all rubbish! Saturn don't know what he's
talkin' about. Look!"

The carriage door was vivaciously opened from the inside and a
delightful little old lady, dressed in brown silk, with a long, cheerful
pointed nose, rosy cheeks, and chestnut hair--that almost mightn't have
been a wig in certain lights--prepared to leap forth without waiting for
the reverent assistance that the Prophet, flanked by Mr. Ferdinand and
Gustavus, was in waiting to afford.

As she jumped, she began to cry, "Not much wrong with me, is there,
Hennessey?" but before the sentence was completed she had caught her
neat foot in her brown silk gown, had stumbled from the step of the
carriage to the pavement, had twisted her pretty ankle, had reeled and
almost fallen, had been caught by the Prophet and Mr. Ferdinand, borne
tenderly into the hall, and placed in the armchair which the terrified
Gustavus, with almost enraged ardour, drove forward to receive her. As
she sank down in it, helpless, Mrs. Merillia exclaimed, with unabated
vivacity,--

"It's happened, Hennessey, it's happened! But it was my own doin' and
yours. You shouldn't have prophesied at your age, and I shouldn't have
jumped at mine.

"Dearest grannie!" cried the Prophet, on his knees beside her, "how
grieved, how shocked I am! Is it--is it--"

"Sprained, Hennessey?"

He nodded. Mechanically Mr. Ferdinand nodded. Gustavus let his powdered