d to it!" the Major said,
"the--the little person who opened the door." His sister-in-law had
brought the poor little devil's bonnet and shawl out, flung them upon
the study-table. Did Goodenough know anything about the--the little
person? "I just caught a glimpse of her as we passed in," the Major
said, "and begad she was uncommonly nice-looking." The Doctor looked
queer: the Doctor smiled--in the very gravest moments, with life and
death pending, such strange contrasts and occasions of humour will
arise, and such smiles will pass, to satirise the gloom, as it were, and
to make it more gloomy!

"I have it," at last he said, re-entering the study; and he wrote a
couple of notes hastily at the table there, and sealed one of them.
Then, taking up poor Fanny's shawl and bonnet, and the notes, he went
out in the passage to that poor little messenger, and said, "Quick,
nurse; you must carry this to the surgeon, and bid him come instantly;
and then go to my house, and ask for my servant Harbottle, and tell him
to get this prescription prepared, and wait until I--until it is ready.
It may take a little in preparation."

So poor Fanny trudged away with her two notes, and found the apothecary,
who lived in the Strand hard by, and who came straightway, his lancet
in his pocket, to operate on his patient; and then Fanny made for the
Doctor's house, in Hanover Square.

The Doctor was at home again before the prescription was made up, which
took Harbottle, his servant, such a long time in compounding; and,
during the remainder of Arthur's illness, poor Fanny never made her
appearance in the quality of nurse at his chambers any more. But for
that day and the next, a little figure might be seen lurking about
Pen's staircase,--a sad, sad little face looked at and interrogated the
apothecary, and the apothecary's boy, and the laundress, and the kind
physician himself, as they passed out of the chambers of the sick man.
And on the third day, the kind Doctor's chariot stopped at Shepherd's
Inn, and the good, and honest, and benevolent man went into the porter's
lodge, and tended a little patient whom he had there, for the best
remedy he found was on the day when he was enabled to tell Fanny Bolton
that the crisis was over, and that there was at length every hope for
Arthur Pendennis.

J. Costigan, Esquire, late of Her Majesty's service, saw the Doctor's
carriage, and criticised its horses and appointments. "Green liveries,
bedad!" th