The Argosy — page 274: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Mrs. Raven’s Temptation. 253 “You don’t have many cases of this sort among our healthy peasantry, I dare say,” said Frank. “No, no. Still I can’t say I felt anxious, for good common sense, goodwill, and good discipline go far of themselves in nursing. But just as I’m sitting down to my breakfast, in walks Nurse Hannah to see me. I hadn’t seen her of late years, but I’d heard of her from time to time, among my professional brethren, as having given up her hospital work and taken to private nursing, especially in mental cases. And now here she came in, saying she was taking a little change of air from her labours in London, and that, finding herself in my neigh- bourhood, she had remembered our old acquaintance, and had thought that if I had any nice comfortable duty to give her, she was quite fit to undertake it. An angel from heaven couldn’t have been more welcome, my dear Mr. Frank. Yes, Nurse Hannah,” he added, as she entered the room, to ask for further instruction in some matter of drugs or diet, “‘ I’m talking about you, and your arrival in the very nick of time.” | The little woman looked up at Frank Raven. She had the watch- mg eyes of her calling. ‘There was just a momentary quiver of the muscles about her mouth—a little smile with a spice of mockery in it~. The Reverend Jasper Toynbee, who had then come in to inquire after the Squire, noticed it, and remarked as she went away : ‘Uniforms may disguise human nature, but they don’t change it. Half of a nun’s saintliness is often in her coif. I fancy we set our faces to match our clothes, doctor. If that littl woman hadn’t been a trained nurse, she would have laughed outright just now, and I fear it would have beenat you. Your comparing her with an angel tickled her tremendously !” “Well, well,” said the doctor, good-naturedly, ‘‘ everybody is all the better for a laugh. It is the cheapest and safest medicine going, and even if people take it at our expense, it leaves us none the poorer.” “Ym afraid your poor brother never allowed himself enough laughter,” said the reverend gentleman to Frank, as the doctor went out. ‘This is all very sad, my boy.” ‘Yes, indeed,” answered Frank, ‘but I think Dr. Wragge seems rather hopeful to-day.” The clergyman shook his head dubiously. Dr. Wragge was an old friend of his, and he had spoken plainly to him. There might be an apparently satisfactory rallying, but the real end would inevitably be speedy death; or else the long, lingering death-in-life of imbecility. The old gentleman looked a little wistfully at the gallant young man before him, who might so soon be the last of this fated Raven race. **Had you noticed any change whatever in Leonard before this attack P” Frank asked. “There was no difference at all in Leonard,” said Mr. Toynbee. **None that I could see. In fact, I thought him rather better than usual ; perhaps that was a badsign! Of course, I’ve seen him almost COMmicoooks (C©)