se
nursing by the rule of three, and as a consequence I get myself reported.
Sister Allworthy has reported me three times, bless her! Thrice the
brinded cat hath mewed, and now she threatens to have me up before the
matron. That dear soul has difficulties of locomotion, being buried under
the Pelion on Ossa of a mountain of fat. She inhabits a cave of Adullam
on the edge of the Inferno--i. e., the 'theatre'--below stairs, and has a
small dog with a bad heart and broken wind always nagging on her knee. I
call her the Chief Broker in Breakages and Head Dealer in Diseases, and
she is only seen once a day when she comes round to take stock. You have
to be nice with her Majesty,' for she can haul you up at the weekly
board, and put a score against you in the black book, and send you away
without a certificate. If that happens, a girl who expects to earn her
living as a nurse has never any particular need to pray, 'In all time of
our wealth, good Lord deliver us.'

"But, oh, my dear grandfather, what do you think of our John Storm now?
After uttering the lamentations of Jeremiah and predicting all the
plagues of Egypt, he has gone off to hold his peace--that is to say, he
has gone to make his 'Retreat,' which, being interpreted, means praying
without ceasing, and also without speaking, eighteen hours a day, six
days at a spell, and sometimes sixty. When he comes back reeking with all
that holiness I shall feel myself such a miserable sinner----

"Soberly, I could cry to think of it, though, and when I remember that
perhaps I was partly to blame----

"It was this way: In that 'ter'ble discoorse' I told you he had scotched
the snake, not killed it, and his vicar (I call him Mr. Worldly Wiseman),
finding that his ladies and nobility went out like the Pharisees, one by
one, told our poor John he was ill and stood in need of instant rest. It
looked like it certainly, and the trouble must have been a sort of human
rabies in which the poor victim bites at his best friends first. He came
here with his lower lip hanging like an old dog's, and I was so stupid as
not to see that he was being hunted like a dog too, and only told myself
how ugly and untidy he had grown of late. But the Sister had just before
been showing me her tusks again, and being possessed with a fury, I gave
it him world without end. He was very unreasonable though, and seemed to
say that I must have no friends and no amusements that were not of his
choosing, and t