Mere. This countryman
of Hamlet, as he liked to call himself, was a living protest against
the sentiments of inveterate contempt and hatred, with which his nurse
was accustomed to regard the men. When pain spared him at intervals,
Mr. Oxbye presented the bright blue eyes and the winning smile which
suggested the resemblance to the Irish lord. His beardless face, thin
towards the lower extremities, completed the likeness in some degree
only. The daring expression of Lord Harry, in certain emergencies,
never appeared. Nursing him carefully, on the severest principles of
duty as distinguished from inclination, Fanny found herself in the
presence of a male human being, who in the painless intervals of his
malady, wrote little poems in her praise; asked for a few flowers from
the garden, and made prettily arranged nosegays of them devoted to
herself; cried, when she told him he was a fool, and kissed her hand
five minutes afterwards, when she administered his medicine, and gave
him no pleasant sweet thing to take the disagreeable taste out of his
mouth. This gentle patient loved Lord Harry, loved Mr. Vimpany, loved
the furious Fanny, resist it as she might. On her obstinate refusal to
confide to him the story of her life--after he had himself set her the
example at great length--he persisted in discovering for himself that
"this interesting woman was a victim of sorrows of the heart." In
another state of existence, he was offensively certain that she would
be living with _him._ "You are frightfully pale, you will soon die; I
shall break a blood-vessel, and follow you; we shall sit side by side
on clouds, and sing together everlastingly to accompaniment of
celestial harps. Oh, what a treat!" Like a child, he screamed when he
was in pain; and, like a child, he laughed when the pain had gone away.
When she was angry enough with him to say, "If I had known what sort of
man you were, I would never have undertaken to nurse you," he only
answered, "my dear, let us thank God together that you did not know."
There was no temper in him to be roused; and, worse still, on buoyant
days, when his spirits were lively, there was no persuading him that he
might not live long enough to marry his nurse, if he only put the
question to her often enough. What was to be done with such a man as
this? Fanny believed that she despised her feeble patient. At the same
time, the food that nourished him was prepared by her own hands--while
the other inhab