edly ill-tempered. A captious
irritability possessed me, alternating with fits of unaccountable
fatigue. At that time I was always either tired or cross, and
sometimes both. I must have made Nurse Bundle very uncomfortable. I
was so little happy, for my own share, that when after a day's
headache I was put to bed as an invalid, it was a delicious relief to
be acknowledged to be ill, to throw off clothes and occupation, and
shut my eyes and be nursed.

This happiness lasted for about half an hour. Then I began to shiver,
and, through no lack of blankets my teeth were soon chattering and the
bed shaking under me, as it had been with the village boy. But when
this was succeeded by burning heat, and intolerable, consuming
restlessness, I would have been glad to shiver again. And then my mind
wandered with a restlessness more intolerable than the tossing of my
body; and all boundaries of time, and place, and person became
confused and indefinitely extended, and hot hours were like ages, and
I thought I was that other boy, and that myself would not wait upon
him; and the only sensible words I spoke were cries for drink; and so
the fever got me fairly into its clutches.

CHAPTER IX

"PEACE BE TO THIS HOUSE"

I can appreciate now what my father and Nurse Bundle must have
suffered during my dangerous illness. It was not a common tie that
bound my father's affections to my life. Not only was I his son, I was
his only son. Moreover, I was the only living child of the beloved
wife of his youth--all that remained to him of my fair mother. Then I
was the heir to his property, the hope of his family, and, without
undue egotism, I may say, from what I have been told, that I was a
quaint, original, and (thanks to Mrs. Bundle) not ill-behaved child,
and that, for a while at least, I should have been much missed in the
daily life of the household.

Mrs. Cadman told me, long afterwards, exactly how many days and nights
Nurse Bundle passed in my sick chamber, "and never had her clothes
off;" and if the wearing of clothes had been one of the sharpest
torments of the Inquisition, Mrs. Cadman could not have spoken in a
hollower tone, or thrown more gloom round the announcement.

That, humanly speaking, my good and loving nurse saved my life, I must
ever remember with deep gratitude. There are stages of fever, when, as
they say, "a nurse is everything;" and a very little laziness,
selfishness, or inattention on Nurse Bundle's pa