day afternoon.

He found Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, in tears in the sitting-room,
and got a bad report of the poor dear young gentleman within. Pen's
condition had so much alarmed her, that she was obliged to have recourse
to the stimulus of brandy to enable her to support the grief which
his illness occasioned. As she hung about his bed, and endeavoured to
minister to him, her attentions became intolerable to the invalid, and
he begged her peevishly not to come near him. Hence the laundress's
tears and redoubled grief, and renewed application to the bottle, which
she was accustomed to use as an anodyne. The Captain rated the
woman soundly for her intemperance, and pointed out to her the fatal
consequences which must ensue if she persisted in her imprudent courses.

Pen, who was by this time in a very fevered state, yet was greatly
pleased to receive Costigan's visit. He heard the ell-known voice in his
sitting-room, as he lay in the bedroom within, and called the Captain
eagerly to him, and thanked him for coming, and begged him to take a
chair and talk to him. The Captain felt the young man's pulse with
great gravity--(his own tremulous and clammy hand growing steady for the
instant while his finger pressed Arthur's throbbing vein)--the pulse
was beating very fiercely--Pen's face was haggard and hot--his eyes were
bloodshot and gloomy; his "bird," as the Captain pronounced the word,
afterwards giving a description of his condition, had not been shaved
for nearly a week. Pen made his visitor sit down, and, tossing and
turning in his comfortless bed, began to try and talk to the Captain in
a lively manner, about the Back Kitchen, about Vauxhall and when they
should go again, and about Fanny--how was little Fanny?

Indeed how was she? We know how she went home very sadly on the
previous Sunday evening, after she had seen Arthur light his lamp in his
chambers, whilst he was having his interview with Bows. Bows came back
to his own rooms presently, passing by the lodge door, and looking into
Mrs. Bolton's, according to his wont, as he passed, but with a
very melancholy face. She had another weary night that night. Her
restlessness wakened her little bedfellows more than once. She daren't
read more of 'Walter Lorraine:' Father was at home, and would suffer no
light. She kept the book under her pillow, and felt for it in the night.
She had only just got to sleep, when the children began to stir with the
morning, almost