all the ordinary barriers of wealth and station, pride and reserve. Letty Brown would have gone away again immediately, seeing her visit had been paid at an unpropitious moment, but it went sorely against the grain with the girl to quit a scene of suffering: something might be needed from her—there might be something for her to do.
Letty lingered, full of stillness and sympathy, and something was needed from her ere long. An excitable maid-servant employed to convey hot water to the patient’s room, and compelled to witness his agony, fell down in a swoon on the kitchen floor, and while her fellow-servants crowded round her to recover her, Letty carried up the next supply of water in the general confusion. A medical man was endeavouring to restrain the convulsions of the young man, and while he did so he caught Letty’s eye—that rational, full, deep, well-set eye—as she stood on the threshold, and, with an imperative sign, he summoned her to his assistance. He kept Letty hours by the bed, until even her strength was deserting her. Just before he dismissed her he inquired curiously,
“Have you ever seen a case of this kind before?”
“No, sir, never,” answered Letty, thankfully.
“Invaluable young woman that,” he observed, energetically, the moment she had left the room; “firm nerves, quick observation, a kind heart, takes a hint, develops a resource. Probably lost where she is,” he continued, grudgingly. “Should like to tempt her to take service in my ward.”
The words pierced the ears dulled and afflicted by poor Fred’s frightful attack. “Who is she? How did a stranger come here at such a time? A protégée of Peaston’s? Very indiscreet of Peaston. Providential, did you say? Peaston could not know that,” spoke the woman’s sentiment brokenly first; and the man’s reason replied resolutely, “Never mind, my dear, you heard what the doctor remarked; engage her as a nurse for poor Fred if he is spared. Offer her any wages.”
And Letty remained at the post which had presented itself to her. She would have done so without fee, had none been forthcoming. She could please herself, and she was pleased and proud, with a womanly breadth of satisfaction and benevolence, that she could relieve the unhappy young man, though he was only a poor, stupid, vicious, wrecked sot of a gentleman, under the ghastly thunder-cloud of delirium tremens.
In a month from that date Letty Brown went abroad with the Bridgewaters, who, in ordinary, accommodating phrase, had taken a fancy to the superior mill girl, not as nurse to Mr. Fred, who was again partially restored to sense and action, and on his own hands, to the great loss to himself and the smaller injury to society, and who was left behind the travelling party, judiciously, as far as the comfort of the other members was concerned. Letty went as aide to Mrs. Peaston, to Mrs. Bridgewater’s maid, to the head nurse of the young Bridgewater’s. She got higher wages as an amphibious domestic than she could win working in the factory. She would see the world and improve herself, as the quiet young woman had an ardent desire to do, and her George was reconciled to the separation because he could trust her, and he was as proud that she should command these advantages as he was mortified that they should be got without his instrumentality and not in his company.
II.
