t bringing her hot
flannels, and stood talking between the changes.

"I wish the doctor would come!--Them doctors!--I hope to goodness Dr.
Faber wasn't out when the boy got to Glaston. Every body in this mortal
universe always is out when he's wanted: that's _my_ experience. You
ain't so old as me, miss. And Dr. Faber, you see, miss, he be such a
favorite as _have_ to go out to his dinner not unfrequent. They may have
to send miles to fetch him."

She talked in the vain hope of distracting the poor lady's attention
from her suffering.

It was a little up stairs cottage-room, the corners betwixt the ceiling
and the walls cut off by the slope of the roof. So dark was the night,
that, when Mrs. Puckridge carried the candle out of the room, the
unshaded dormer window did not show itself even by a bluish glimmer. But
light and dark were alike to her who lay in the little tent-bed, in the
midst of whose white curtains, white coverlid, and white pillows, her
large eyes, black as human eyes could ever be, were like wells of
darkness throwing out flashes of strange light. Her hair too was dark,
brown-black, of great plenty, and so fine that it seemed to go off in a
mist on the whiteness. It had been her custom to throw it over the back
of her bed, but in this old-fashioned one that was impossible, and it
lay, in loveliest confusion, scattered here and there over pillow and
coverlid, as if the wind had been tossing it all a long night at his
will. Some of it had strayed more than half way to the foot of the bed.
Her face, distorted almost though it was with distress, showed yet a
regularity of feature rarely to be seen in combination with such evident
power of expression. Suffering had not yet flattened the delicate
roundness of her cheek, or sharpened the angles of her chin. In her
whiteness, and her constrained, pang-thwarted motions from side to side,
she looked like a form of marble in the agonies of coming to life at the
prayer of some Pygmalion. In throwing out her arms, she had flung back
the bedclothes, and her daintily embroidered night-gown revealed a
rather large, grand throat, of the same rare whiteness. Her hands were
perfect--every finger and every nail--

Those fine[1] nimble brethren small,
Armed with pearl-shell helmets all.

[Footnote 1: _Joshua Sylvester._ I suspect the word ought to be _five_,
not _fine_, as my copy (1613) has it.]

When Mrs. Puckridge came into the room, she always set her candle o