It was a little up stairs cottage-room, the corners betwixt the ceiling and the walls cut off by the slope of the roof.  So dark was the night, that, when Mrs. Puckridge carried the candle out of the room, the unshaded dormer window did not show itself even by a bluish glimmer.  But light and dark were alike to her who lay in the little tent-bed, in the midst of whose white curtains, white coverlid, and white pillows, her large eyes, black as human eyes could ever be, were like wells of darkness throwing out flashes of strange light.  Her hair too was dark, brown-black, of great plenty, and so fine that it seemed to go off in a mist on the whiteness.  It had been her custom to throw it over the back of her bed, but in this old-fashioned one that was impossible, and it lay, in loveliest confusion, scattered here and there over pillow and coverlid, as if the wind had been tossing it all a long night at his will.  Some of it had strayed more than half way to the foot of the bed.  Her face, distorted almost though it was with distress, showed yet a regularity of feature rarely to be seen in combination with such evident power of expression.  Suffering had not yet flattened the delicate roundness of her cheek, or sharpened the angles of her chin.  In her whiteness, and her constrained, pang-thwarted motions from side to side, she looked like a form of marble in the agonies of coming to life at the prayer of some Pygmalion.  In throwing out her arms, she had flung back the bedclothes, and her daintily embroidered night-gown revealed a rather large, grand throat, of the same rare whiteness.  Her hands were perfect—­every finger and every nail—­

  Those fine[1] nimble brethren small,
  Armed with pearl-shell helmets all.

[Footnote 1:  Joshua Sylvester. I suspect the word ought to be five, not fine, as my copy (1613) has it.]

When Mrs. Puckridge came into the room, she always set her candle on the sill of the storm-window:  it was there, happily, when the doctor drew near the village, and it guided him to the cottage-gate.  He fastened Niger to the gate, crossed the little garden, gently lifted the door-latch, and ascended the stair.  He found the door of the chamber open, signed to Mrs. Puckridge to be still, softly approached the bed, and stood gazing in silence on the sufferer, who lay at the moment apparently unconscious.  But suddenly, as if she had become aware of a presence, she flashed wide her great eyes, and the pitiful entreaty that came into them when she saw him, went straight to his heart.  Faber felt more for the sufferings of some of the lower animals than for certain of his patients; but children and women he would serve like a slave.  The dumb appeal of her eyes almost unmanned him.

“I am sorry to see you so ill,” he said, as he took her wrist.  “You are in pain:  where?”