hese creatures from their own way of doing their
own work. It was not a question with Iris, whether she was entitled by
any special relation or by the fitness of things to play the part of a
nurse. She was a wilful creature that must have her way in this matter.
And it so proved that it called for much patience and long endurance
to carry through the duties, say rather the kind offices, the painful
pleasures, which she had chosen as her share in the household where
accident had thrown her. She had that genius of ministration which is
the special province of certain women, marked even among their helpful
sisters by a soft, low voice, a quiet footfall, a light hand, a cheering
smile, and a ready self-surrender to the objects of their care, which
such trifles as their own food, sleep, or habits of any kind never
presume to interfere with. Day after day, and too often through the long
watches of the night, she kept her place by the pillow.

That girl will kill herself over me, Sir,--said the poor Little
Gentleman to me, one day,--she will kill herself, Sir, if you don't
call in all the resources of your art to get me off as soon as may be. I
shall wear her out, Sir, with sitting in this close chamber and watching
when she ought to be sleeping, if you leave me to the care of Nature
without dosing me.

This was rather strange pleasantry, under the circumstances. But there
are certain persons whose existence is so out of parallel with the
larger laws in the midst of which it is moving, that life becomes to
them as death and death as life.--How am I getting along?--he said,
another morning. He lifted his shrivelled hand, with the death's-head
ring on it, and looked at it with a sad sort of complacency. By this one
movement, which I have seen repeatedly of late, I know that his thoughts
have gone before to another condition, and that he is, as it were,
looking back on the infirmities of the body as accidents of the past.
For, when he was well, one might see him often looking at the
handsome hand with the flaming jewel on one of its fingers. The single
well-shaped limb was the source of that pleasure which in some form or
other Nature almost always grants to her least richly endowed children.
Handsome hair, eyes, complexion, feature, form, hand, foot, pleasant
voice, strength, grace, agility, intelligence,--how few there are that
have not just enough of one at least of these gifts to show them that
the good Mother, busy with her