It seems to me likely that you would have
offered an asylum to an interesting sufferer. Mr. Townsend has been
a good deal in the house; there is something in the house that tells
me so. We doctors, you know, end by acquiring fine perceptions, and
it is impressed upon my sensorium that he has sat in these chairs, in
a very easy attitude, and warmed himself at that fire. I don't
grudge him the comfort of it; it is the only one he will ever enjoy
at my expense. It seems likely, indeed, that I shall be able to
economise at his own. I don't know what you may have said to him, or
what you may say hereafter; but I should like you to know that if you
have encouraged him to believe that he will gain anything by hanging
on, or that I have budged a hair's-breadth from the position I took
up a year ago, you have played him a trick for which he may exact
reparation. I'm not sure that he may not bring a suit against you.
Of course you have done it conscientiously; you have made yourself
believe that I can be tired out. This is the most baseless
hallucination that ever visited the brain of a genial optimist. I am
not in the least tired; I am as fresh as when I started; I am good
for fifty years yet. Catherine appears not to have budged an inch
either; she is equally fresh; so we are about where we were before.
This, however, you know as well as I. What I wish is simply to give
you notice of my own state of mind! Take it to heart, dear Lavinia.
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