me thing."

"Of course it isn't. Your husband, according to the story you told me
when I took these rooms, died of fever."

"Yes, but the fever began just in this way. It carried him off in no
time. You had better see a doctor, sir. Doctor was no use in my
husband's case, but it is satisfaction to have him."

Here Sarah Ann, who had been listening with mouth and eyes open,
suddenly burst into tears, and was led out of the room, exclaiming,
"Him such a quiet gentleman, and he never flung nothing at me."

Though I knew that I had only caught a nasty cold, a conviction in
which the doctor confirmed me, my landlady stood out for its being
just such another case as her husband's, and regaled me for hours with
reminiscences of his rapid decline. If I was a little better one day,
alas! he had been a little better the day before he died; and if I
answered her peevishly, she told Sarah Ann that my voice was going. She
brought the beef-tea up with her own hands, her countenance saying that
I might as well have it, though it could not save me. Sometimes I pushed
it away untasted (how I loathe beef-tea now!), when she whispered
something to Sarah Ann that sent that tender-hearted maid howling once
more from the room.

"He's supped it all," Sarah Ann said one day, brightening.

"That's a worse sign," said her mistress, "than if he hadn't took none."

I lay on a sofa, pulled close to the fire, and when the doctor came, my
landlady was always at his heels, Sarah Ann's dismal face showing at the
door. The doctor is a personal friend of my own, and each day he said I
was improving a little.

"Ah, doctor!" my landlady said, reprovingly.

"He does it for the best," she exclaimed to me, "but I don't hold with
doctors as deceive their patients. Why don't he speak out the truth like
a man? My husband were told the worst, and so he had time to reconcile
himself."

On one of these occasions I summoned up sufficient energy to send her
out of the room; but that only made matters worse.

"Poor gentleman!" I heard her say to Sarah Ann; "he is very violent
to-day. I saw he were worse the moment I clapped eyes on him. Sarah Ann,
I shouldn't wonder though we had to hold him down yet."

About an hour afterwards she came in to ask me if I "had come more round
to myself," and when I merely turned round on the sofa for reply, she
said, in a loud whisper to Sarah Ann, that I "were as quiet as a lamb
now." Then she stroked me and went away.