"Quite cured! Bah! It was easy enough. My doctoring was no good, what
she wanted was to see the gentleman again whom she believed to have
slighted her. I set people to work to find him. They found him, and
the poor child has recovered rapidly and I don't believe she well can
have a relapse. It was all a mistake or a misunderstanding that was
all, and now matters are as happy as the day is long."
I could not help wishing then that he might as easily solve the cause of
so many others' terrible state; but when I hinted at such a thing he
shook his head.
"Such cases as hers are easy to manage, Miss Stoneleigh; I wish I could
deal with my other patients as well."
CHAPTER TWELVE.
SOMEBODY DEAD.
Going about the streets of London on errands of mercy, naturally makes
one observant of everything that seems in any way connected with trouble
or sorrow. If I see a family moving, with all the discomforts of
leaving one home for another, I immediately begin to wonder whether it
is a voluntary affair or whether it is the result of misfortune. Again,
a funeral always takes my attention and I find myself wondering whether
the mourners could be helped or comforted by me, and I note whether the
dead is young or old by the funeral trappings, and too often see that it
is some tender child, though the grief is as great or greater when it is
some dear wife or mother, or may be the father--the stay of some family.
My friends ought to consider me a doleful miserable person but they do
not, and they never think it eccentric of me to take so much interest in
houses with the window blinds drawn or shutters up, but rather give me
their sympathy and help.
Noticing such matters it will be no cause for surprise that I had often
marked the black crape band worn upon the arm of their uniform coats by
soldiers and volunteers. The first time then that I saw driver after
driver of the omnibuses along a busy line of route with a tiny black
crape bow fastened on his whip I naturally became eager to know why this
was, or rather who might be the important personage to whom the sign of
respect was paid.
I felt as if I could give anything for an hour's chat with one of the
drivers, but how was it to be obtained? I knew they were for long hours
upon the box, and that during the short time they were at home it would
be hard work to get either of them to tell me what I wanted, so I set to
and pondered.
I don't know that I should have felt any compunction in taking a seat
outside an omnibus, though now-a-days it would seem a very out of the
way place for a lady in London streets. But I thought that if I could
find one going out through the suburbs to some pleasant village it would
be no more extraordinary than for a lady to take a seat upon a stage
coach for a ride through one of the outlying districts beyond the reach
of the rail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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