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Updated: May 27, 2025
"Well, child," said Doctor Grimshawe, "little Ned will have his rights at least, at my hands, if not other people's rights likewise; and, if it be right, I shall answer his question. Only, let him ask it at once; for I want to be busy thinking about something else." "Then, Doctor Grim," said little Ned, "tell me, in the first place, where I came from, and how you came to have me?"
Doctor Grimshawe having taken it upon him to be host, for, up to this time, the stranger stood upon his own responsibility, and, having voluntarily presented himself to the Doctor, had only himself to thank for any scant courtesy he might meet, but now the grim Doctor became genial after his own fashion.
"It is not the way to laugh, Doctor Grim," persisted the child, but either could not or would not assign any reason for her disapprobation, although what she said appeared to produce a noticeable effect on Doctor Grimshawe, who lapsed into a rough, harsh manner, that seemed to satisfy Elsie better.
But little Elsie, having very quick ears, and a faculty of attending to more affairs than one, now called out, "Doctor Grim, Ned and I know where that gravestone is." "Hush, Elsie," whispered Ned, earnestly. "Come forward here, both of you," said Doctor Grimshawe.
"Well, Doctor," said he, with a shrewd wink in his face, "are you looking for one of your patients? The man who is to be put to bed here was never caught in your spider's web." "No," said Doctor Grimshawe; "when my patients have done with me, I leave them to you and the old Nick, and never trouble myself about them more.
At the breakfast-table the next morning, however, appeared Doctor Grimshawe, wearing very much the same aspect of an uncombed, unshorn, unbrushed, odd sort of a pagan as at other times, and making no difference in his breakfast, except that he poured a pretty large dose of brandy into his cup of tea; a thing, however, by no means unexampled or very unusual in his history.
Alas! it is a hard case with a man who lives upon his own bottom and responsibility, making himself no allies, sewing himself on to nobody's skirts, insulating himself, hard, when his trouble comes; and so poor Doctor Grimshawe was like to find it.
High up in the old carved roof, meanwhile, the spiders of centuries still hung their flaunting webs with a profusion that old Doctor Grimshawe would have been ravished to see; but even this was to be remedied, for one day, on looking in, Redclyffe found the great hall dim with floating dust, and down through it came great floating masses of cobweb, out of which the old Doctor would have undertaken to regenerate the world; and he saw, dimly aloft, men on ladders sweeping away these accumulations of years, and breaking up the haunts and residences of hereditary spiders.
It is true, when, once, the bottle happened to be empty for a whole day together, Doctor Grimshawe was observed by crusty Hannah and by the children to be considerably fiercer than usual: so that probably, by some maladjustment of consequences, his intemperance was only to be found in refraining from brandy.
Some of these, and not the least singular, referred to the ancient family which had founded the Hospital; and he was attracted by seeing a mention of a Bloody Footstep, which reminded him of the strange old story which good Doctor Grimshawe had related by his New England fireside, in those childish days when Edward dwelt with him by the graveyard, On reading it, however, he found that the English legend, if such it could be called, was far less full and explicit than that of New England.
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