‘Beef tea and broth will be wanted; but the chief thing is to see that he takes them. He must have nourishment every half-hour. Look here, my good girl,’ said Dr. Saunders, turning to the servant, ‘you must help your mistress to nurse this gentleman day and night, till we can get a professional nurse.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sarah. ‘I can make up a bed on the sitting-room sofa,’ said Mrs. Podmore, ‘so as to be always close at hand.’ ‘Yes, but that won’t be much use if you’re a heavy sleeper,’ answered the doctor. ‘I’m a very light sleeper, sir. I sometimes hear the church clock strike every hour of the night.’ ‘Living so near the belfry I hardly wonder that you do,’ said the doctor. He gave full directions as to what was to be done for his patient. It was not a case for drugs, but for care and nourishment. The loss of blood, coming upon a constitution much worn with work and watching, had caused a greater shock to the system than Dr. Saunders, or even Dr. Bolling, had apprehended. In the next street the parish doctor ran against Mr. Pudge, a man with a pale fat face, greasy, smeared with printers’ ink, sub-editor of the _Bridford Chronicle_. ‘How are your patients going on?’ asked Mr. Pudge. ‘Any abatement of the epidemic?’ ‘None, I am sorry to say: but I’ve got a patient in Church Street that I’m more concerned about than all my cholera patients.’ ‘Who is that?’ ‘Mr. Culverhouse. He’s down with fever. Overwork and anxiety have brought it on. He’s been working as hard as that French bishop you’ve read about when the plague was raging at Marseilles.’ ‘Ay, to be sure,’ said the sub-editor, who had never heard of the bishop or the plague at Marseilles, and who booked the fact as a good starting-point for his next leading article on the Bridford pestilence. It was Friday afternoon, and Mr. Pudge was hastening to his office to see the _Chronicle_ through the press. He did not forget to put in a paragraph, with a side heading,-- ‘SERIOUS ILLNESS OF THE REV. C. CULVERHOUSE.--We regret to hear that this gentleman, whose indefatigable labours among our suffering poor during the prevailing epidemic have been beyond all praise, has at length broken down under the burden imposed upon him, and is confined to his bed with a severe attack of fever.’ CHAPTER XIX. MR. PIPER FALLS IN LOVE.