She made no account whatever of his six feet—his manly thews and sinews: she turned him in his bed as another woman would have turned a babe in its cradle. When he was good, she addressed him as "my dear," and "honey;" and when he was bad, she sometimes shook him. Did he attempt to speak when MacTurk was there, she lifted her hand and bade him "hush!" like a nurse checking a forward child. If she had not smoked—if she had not taken gin, it would have been better, he thought; but she did both. Once—in her absence—he intimated to MacTurk that "that woman was a dram-drinker."
"Pooh! my dear sir; they are all so," was the reply he got for his pains. "But Horsfall has this virtue," added the surgeon,—"drunk or sober, she always remembers to obey me."
At length the latter autumn passed: its fogs, its rains, withdrew from England their mourning and their tears; its winds swept on to sigh over lands far away. Behind November came deep winter; clearness, stillness, frost accompanying.
A calm day had settled into a crystalline evening; the world wore a North Pole colouring: all its lights and tints looked like the "reflets"[1] of white, or violet, or pale green gems. The hills wore a lilac-blue; the setting sun had purple in its red; the sky was ice, all silvered azure; when the stars rose, they were of white crystal—not gold; gray, or cerulean,
- ↑ Find me an English word as good, reader, and I will gladly dispense with the French word. Reflections won't do.
