is reason, I really cannot summon courage
to describe what passed between my blind Lucilla and me when I returned
to our pretty sitting-room. She made me cry at the time; and she would
make me (and perhaps you) cry again now, if I wrote the little melancholy
story of what this tender young creature suffered when I told her my
miserable news. I won't write it; I am dead against tears. They affect
the nose; and my nose is my best feature. Let us use our eyes, my fair
friends, to conquer, not to cry.

Be it enough to say, that when I went back to Browndown, Lucilla went
with me.

I now observed her, for the first time, to be jealous of the eyes of us
happy people who could see. The instant she entered, she insisted on
being near enough to the bed, to hear us, or to touch us, as we waited on
the injured man. This was at once followed by her taking the place
occupied by Mrs. Gootheridge at the bed-head, and herself bathing Oscar's
face and forehead. She was even jealous of _me,_ when she discovered that
I was moistening the bandages on the wound. I irritated her into boldly
kissing the poor insensible face in our presence! The landlady of the
Cross Hands was one of my sort: she took cheerful views of things. "Sweet
on him--eh, ma'am?" she whispered in my ear; "we shall have a wedding in
Dimchurch." In presence of these kissings and whisperings, Mrs.
Gootheridge's brother, as the only man present, began to look very
uncomfortable. This worthy creature belonged to that large and
respectable order of Englishmen, who don't know what to do with their
hands, or how to get out of a room. I took pity on him--he was, I assure
you, a fine man. "Smoke your pipe, sir, in the garden," I said. "We will
call to you from the window, if we want you up here." Mrs. Gootheridge's
brother cast on me one look of unutterable gratitude--and escaped, as if
he had been let out of a trap.

At last, the doctor came.

His first words were an indescribable relief to us. The skull of our poor
Oscar was not injured. There was concussion of the brain, and there was a
scalp-wound--inflicted evidently with a blunt instrument. As to the
wound, I had done all that was necessary in the doctor's absence. As to
the injury to the brain, time and care would put everything right again.
"Make your minds easy, ladies," said this angel of a man. "There is no
reason for feeling the slightest alarm about him."

He came to his senses--that is to say, he opened his eye