which exploded and burnt poor little Mim's eyebrows and eye-lashes. Gaspar eventually got into trouble about some original draughts of his own composition, which he supplied to his master's patients as healing waters made up in accordance with that gentleman's prescriptions, and spent several years in a reformatory.
I have a dismal impression of the wretched afternoons that Mim and Joe and I used to spend together in our great bare play-room. We were locked in by Nurse Starke at about five every afternoon, and not released until seven, when we had supper, and as the shadows deepened and the fire got lower and lower, we crowded together in a corner for warmth, and told each other strange stories of princes and noblemen who were tortured by cruel and vindictive page-boys; with an occasional touch from Joe Paulby upon caverns, demons, vampires, and other ghostly matters until poor little Mim screamed aloud with terror.
She was a pretty, fragile, sweet-tempered, clinging little soul, far too delicate for the coarse inconsiderate treatment to which she was subjected in common with ourselves. So at last she became seriously ill, and we noticed that the poor little child grew paler and thinner in her cot, day after day, day after day. She was very cheerful, although so weak, and when the tall, grave, kind doctor came—once a day at first, and then toward the last (for she died) two or three times a day—she would say in reply to his question, "And how is our Little Mim?" that she was much better, and hoped in a day or two to be quite well again. After a time she was removed to another room which was always darkened,
