‘Forgive me,’ said Lucille, stretching out her wasted hand to the nurse, and then to the doctor, who bent down to press his lips to the poor little feverish hand. ‘I daresay I seem very ungrateful; but it isn’t that—I only want to be well. I feel so helpless lying here; it’s so dreadful to be a prisoner, bound hand and foot, as it were. Can’t you get me well quickly somehow, Lucius? Never mind if I’m ill again by and by; patch me up for a little while.’ ‘Nay, dearest, there shall be no half cure, no patching. With God’s help, I hope to restore you to perfect health before very long. But if you are impatient, if you give way to fretfulness, you will lessen your chances of a rapid recovery.’ Lucille gave no answer save a long weary sigh. Tears gathered slowly in her sad eyes, and she turned her face to the wall. ‘Yes, poor dear,’ said Nurse Milderson, looking down at her compassionately; ‘as long as she do fret and werrit herself so, she’ll keep backarding of her recovery.’ Here the nurse beckoned mysteriously to Lucius, and led him out of the room into the corridor, where she unbosomed herself of her cares. ‘It isn’t as I want to alarm you, Dr. Davoren’—Lucius held brevet rank in the Shadrack-road,—‘far from it; but I feel myself in duty bound to tell you that she’s a little wrong in her head still of a night, between sleeping and waking, as you may say, and talks and rambles more than I like to hear. And it’s always “father,” rambling and rambling on about loving her father, and trusting him in spite of the world, and standing by him, and suchlike. And last night—it might have been from half-past one to two—say a quarter to two, or perhaps twenty minutes,’ said Mrs. Milderson, with infinite precision, ‘I’d been taking forty winks, as you may say, in my chair, being a bit worn out, when she turns every drop of my blood to ice-cold water by crying out sudden, in a voice that pierced me to the marrow—’ ‘_What_, nurse? For goodness’ sake, come to the point,’ cried Lucius, who thought he was never to hear the end of Mrs. Milderson’s personal sensations. ‘I was coming to it, sir,’ replied that lady, with offended dignity, ‘when you interrupted me; I was only anxious to be exack. “O,” she cried out, “not poison! Don’t say that—no, not poison! You wouldn’t do that—you wouldn’t be so wicked as to poison your poor old father.” I think that was enough to freeze anybody’s blood, sir. But, lor, they do take such queer fancies when they’re lightheaded. I’m sure, I nursed a poor dear lady in Stevedor-lane, in purpleoral fever—which her husband was in the coal-and-potato line, and ginger-beer and bloaters, and suchlike—and she used to fancy her poor head was turned into a york-regent, and beg and pray of me ever so pitiful to cut the eyes out of it. I’m proud to say, tho’, as I brought her round, and there isn’t a healthier-looking woman between here and the docks.’