“Cold night, Mrs. Corney,” said this young gentleman, as the matron entered.
“Very cold, indeed, sir,” replied the mistress, in her most civil tones, and dropping a curtsey as she spoke.
“You should get better coals out of your contractors,” said the apothecary’s deputy, breaking a lump on the top of the fire with the rusty poker; “these are not at all the sort of thing for a cold night.”
“They’re the board’s choosing, sir,” returned the matron. “The least they could do, would be to keep us pretty warm: for our places are hard enough.”
The conversation was here interrupted by a moan from the sick woman.
“Oh!” said the young man, turning his face towards the bed, as if he had previously quite forgotten the patient, “it’s all U.P. there, Mrs. Corney.”
“It is, is it, sir?” asked the matron.
“If she lasts a couple of hours, I shall be surprised,” said the apothecary’s apprentice, intent upon the toothpick’s point. “It’s a breakup of the system altogether. Is she dozing, old lady?”
The attendant stooped over the bed, to ascertain; and nodded in the affirmative.
“Then perhaps she’ll go off in that way, if you don’t make a row,” said the young man. “Put the light on the floor. She won’t see it there.”
The attendant did as she was told: shaking her head meanwhile, to intimate that the woman would not die so easily; having done so, she