Dangerfield once or twice attacked Toole rather tartly about Sturk’s case.

‘Can nothing be done to make him speak?  Five minutes’ consciousness would unravel the mystery.’

Then Toole would shrug, and say, ’Pooh—­pooh! my dear Sir, you know nothing.’

‘Why, there’s life!’

‘Ay, the mechanical functions of life, but the brain’s over-powered,’ replied Toole, with a wise frown.

‘Well, relieve it.’

‘By Jupiter, Sir, you make me laugh,’ cried Toole with a grin, throwing up his eyebrows.  ‘I take it, you think we doctors can work miracles.’

‘Quite the reverse, Sir,’ retorted Dangerfield, with a cold scoff.  ’But you say he may possibly live six weeks more; and all that time the wick is smouldering, though the candle’s short—­can’t you blow it in, and give us even one minute’s light?’

’Ay, a smouldering wick and a candle if you please; but enclosed in a glass bottle, how the deuce are you to blow it?’

‘Pish!’ said the silver spectacles, with an icy flash from his glasses.

‘Why, Sir, you’ll excuse me—­but you don’t understand,’ said Toole, a little loftily.  ’There are two contused wounds along the scalp as long as that pencil—­the whole line of each partially depressed, the depression all along being deep enough to lay your finger in.  You can ask Irons, who dresses them when I’m out of the way.’

‘I’d rather ask you, Sir,’ replied Dangerfield, in turn a little high.

’Well, you can’t apply the trepan, the surface is too extended, and all unsound, and won’t bear it—­’twould be simply killing him on the spot—­don’t you see? and there’s no way else to relieve him.’

General Chattesworth had not yet returned.  On his way home he had wandered aside, and visited the fashionable wells of Buxton, intending a three days’ sojourn, to complete his bracing up for the winter.  But the Pool of Siloam did not work pleasantly in the case of the robust general, who was attacked after his second dip with a smart fit of the gout in his left great-toe, where it went on charmingly, without any flickering upward, quite stationary and natural for three weeks.

About the end of which time the period of the annual ball given by the officers of the Royal Irish Artillery arrived.  It was a great event in the town.  To poor Mrs. Sturk, watching by her noble Barney, it seemed, of course, a marvellous insensibility and an outrage.  But the world must follow its instinct and vocation, and attend to its business and amuse itself too, though noble Barneys lie a-dying here and there.

Aunt Becky and Gertrude drew up at the Elms, the rector’s house, with everything very handsome about them, and two laced footmen, with flambeaux, and went in to see little Lily, on their way to the ball, and to show their dresses, which were very fine, indeed, and to promise to come next day and tell her all the news; for Lily, as I mentioned, was an invalid, and balls and flicflacs were not for her.