ded Mrs Richards
as the nurse of little Paul, and who considered herself to have gained
the loss in question, under the roof of the amiable Pipchin. The
excellent and thoughtful old system, hallowed by long prescription,
which has usually picked out from the rest of mankind the most dreary
and uncomfortable people that could possibly be laid hold of, to act as
instructors of youth, finger-posts to the virtues, matrons, monitors,
attendants on sick beds, and the like, had established Mrs Wickam in
very good business as a nurse, and had led to her serious qualities
being particularly commended by an admiring and numerous connexion.

Mrs Wickam, with her eyebrows elevated, and her head on one side,
lighted the way upstairs to a clean, neat chamber, opening on another
chamber dimly lighted, where there was a bed. In the first room, an old
woman sat mechanically staring out at the open window, on the darkness.
In the second, stretched upon the bed, lay the shadow of a figure that
had spurned the wind and rain, one wintry night; hardly to be recognised
now, but by the long black hair that showed so very black against the
colourless face, and all the white things about it.

Oh, the strong eyes, and the weak frame! The eyes that turned so eagerly
and brightly to the door when Harriet came in; the feeble head that
could not raise itself, and moved so slowly round upon its pillow!

'Alice!' said the visitor's mild voice, 'am I late to-night?'

'You always seem late, but are always early.'

Harriet had sat down by the bedside now, and put her hand upon the thin
hand lying there.

'You are better?'

Mrs Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed, like a disconsolate
spectre, most decidedly and forcibly shook her head to negative this
position.

'It matters very little!' said Alice, with a faint smile. 'Better or
worse to-day, is but a day's difference--perhaps not so much.'

Mrs Wickam, as a serious character, expressed her approval with a groan;
and having made some cold dabs at the bottom of the bedclothes, as
feeling for the patient's feet and expecting to find them stony; went
clinking among the medicine bottles on the table, as who should say,
'while we are here, let us repeat the mixture as before.'

'No,' said Alice, whispering to her visitor, 'evil courses, and remorse,
travel, want, and weather, storm within, and storm without, have worn my
life away. It will not last much longer.

She drew the hand up as she spo