City and town life -- Fiction; Urban poor -- Fiction
"To be sure it does, sir. I tell you it's easy enough, now one can see
through it; but I couldn't put that and that together before. Name
never struck me a bit, when it ought to have been the very key to it
all. He was knocked down, and run over by a cab, when out on his larks.
Got his hair cut short, and his mustacher shaved off. There's his
clothes too, up-stairs--reg'lar stableman's suit--masquerading things--
such togs for a gent like him to wear! Poor chap, it was a bad case,
though, for he was nearly killed. Well, of course, they brought him
here, and asked him his name, when, just being able to speak, he says
the very last thing that was in his poor head, before the sense was
knocked out of it, and all its works were brought to a stand still.
`What's your name?' they says; and as I said before, he answers the very
last thing as was in his head before he was stopped short, and that was
the name of the place he had been to--Brownjohn Street; and, saying it,
no doubt, very feebly, they didn't hear any more than the Brownjohn, so
they put him down as Brown, and his Christian name after it, as is their
custom, John--Brown, John; and here he's lain insensible to this day.
But come on up, sir."
Following an attendant, Harry and the sergeant were ushered into a long,
whitewashed ward, where, on either side, in their iron bedsteads, lay
sufferers from the many accidents constantly occurring in the London
streets. Here was a man who had fallen from a scaffold; there one who
had had his arm crushed by machinery, and, all around, suffering enough
to affect the stoutest heart. The sergeant, though, had no eye for
these, and swiftly leading the way down the centre, he conducted Harry
to where, weak, pale, and helpless, on his bed of suffering, lay Lionel
Redgrave,--his hair shaven from his temples, and the large surgical
bandages about his head adding greatly to the cadaverous expression of
his countenance.
There was not the slightest doubt of his having suffered severely--it
was written too plainly on his face; but he seemed now to be perfectly
sensible, and as Clayton approached, he tried feebly to hold out his
hand, whispering as he did so, the one word--
"Harry!"
Sir Francis sat holding the other hand, anxiously watching his son's
face, and hardly reassured by the house-surgeon's declaration that, with
anything like care, the young man was now out of danger.
"Don't speak to him, Clayton," said Sir Francis. "Don't talk, my dear
boy. Pray remember your condition."
"All right," was the reply, but in very feeble tones. "Seems as if I
had been to sleep, and only just woke up. Confounded Hansom!--over me
in a moment--Martin's Lane--remember no more."
"Yes, yes, we know all," said Sir Francis; "but for my sake now be
silent."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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