t enclosed in a
glass bottle, how the deuce _are_ you to blow it?'

'Pish!' said the silver spectacles, with an icy flash from his glasses.

'Why, Sir, you'll excuse me--but you don't understand,' said Toole, a
little loftily. 'There are two contused wounds along the scalp as long
as that pencil--the whole line of each partially depressed, the
depression all along being deep enough to lay your finger in. You can
ask Irons, who dresses them when I'm out of the way.'

'I'd rather ask you, Sir,' replied Dangerfield, in turn a little high.

'Well, you can't apply the trepan, the surface is too extended, and all
unsound, and won't bear it--'twould be simply killing him on the
spot--don't you see? and there's no way else to relieve him.'

General Chattesworth had not yet returned. On his way home he had
wandered aside, and visited the fashionable wells of Buxton, intending a
three days' sojourn, to complete his bracing up for the winter. But the
Pool of Siloam did not work pleasantly in the case of the robust
general, who was attacked after his second dip with a smart fit of the
gout in his left great-toe, where it went on charmingly, without any
flickering upward, quite stationary and natural for three weeks.

About the end of which time the period of the annual ball given by the
officers of the Royal Irish Artillery arrived. It was a great event in
the town. To poor Mrs. Sturk, watching by her noble Barney, it seemed,
of course, a marvellous insensibility and an outrage. But the world must
follow its instinct and vocation, and attend to its business and amuse
itself too, though noble Barneys lie a-dying here and there.

Aunt Becky and Gertrude drew up at the Elms, the rector's house, with
everything very handsome about them, and two laced footmen, with
flambeaux, and went in to see little Lily, on their way to the ball, and
to show their dresses, which were very fine, indeed, and to promise to
come next day and tell her all the news; for Lily, as I mentioned, was
an invalid, and balls and flicflacs were not for her.

Little Lily smiled her bright girlish smile, and threw both her arms
round grand Aunt Becky's neck.

'You good dear Aunt Becky, 'twas so kind and like you to come--you and
Gertie. And oh, Geminie! what a grand pair of ladies!' and she made a
little rustic courtesy, like Nell in the farce. 'And I never saw this
before (a near peep at Gertrude's necklace), and Aunt Becky, what
beautiful lace. And does no