“I will bring it myself, madam; and, if you like, administer it.  I think the young gentleman has made friends with me sufficiently already.”

Tom keeps his word, and is back, and away again to his shop, in a marvellously short space, having “struck a fresh root,” as he calls it; for—­

“What a very well-behaved sensible man that Mr. Thurnall is,” says Lucia to Elsley, an hour after, as she meets him coming in from the garden, where he has been polishing his “Wreck.”  “I am sure he understands his business; he was so kind and quiet, and yet so ready, and seemed to know all the child’s symptoms beforehand, in such a strange way.  I do hope he’ll stay here.  I feel happier about the poor children than I have for a long time.”

“Thurnall?” asks Elsley, who is too absorbed in the “Wreck” to ask after the children; but the name catches his ear.

“Mr. Heale’s new assistant—­the man who was wrecked,” answers she, too absorbed, in her turn, in the children to notice her husband’s startled face.

“Thurnall?  Which Thurnall?”

“Do you know the name?  It’s not a common one,” says she, moving to the door.

“No—­not a common one at all!  You said the children were not well?”!

“I am glad that you thought of asking after the poor things.”

“Why, really, my dear—­” But before he can finish his excuse (probably not worth hearing), she has trotted up-stairs again to the nest, and is as busy as ever.  Possibly Clara might do the greater part of what she does, and do it better:  but still, are they not her children?  Let those who will call a mother’s care mere animal instinct, and liken it to that of the sparrow or the spider:  shall we not rather call it a Divine inspiration, and doubt whether the sparrow and the spider must not have souls to be saved, if they, too, show forth that faculty of maternal love which is, of all human feelings, most inexplicable and most self-sacrificing; and therefore, surely, most heavenly?  If that does not come down straight from heaven, a “good and perfect gift,” then what is heaven, and what the gifts which it sends down?

But poor Elsley may have had solid reasons for thinking more of the name of Thurnall than of his children’s health:  we will hope so for his sake; for, after sundry melodramatic pacings and starts (Elsley was of a melodramatic turn, and fond of a scene, even when he had no spectator, not even a looking-glass;) besides ejaculations of “It cannot be!” “If it were!” “I trust not!” “A fresh ghost to torment me!” “When will come the end of this accursed coil which I have wound round my life?” and so forth, he decided aloud that the suspense was intolerable; and enclosing himself in his poetical cloak and Mazzini wide-awake, strode down to the town, and into the shop.  And as he entered it, “his heart sank to his midriff, and his knees below were loosed.”  For there, making up pills, in a pair of brown holland sleeves of his own manufacture (for Tom was a good seamster, as all travellers should be), whistled Lilliburlero, as of old, the Tom of other days, which Elsley’s muse would fain have buried in a thousand Lethes.