The traveller looked hard at Helen, as she gently drew her father’s head on her shoulder, and there pillowed it with a tenderness which was more that of a mother than child.
“Moral affections, soft, compassionate!—a good child and would go well with—pulsatilla.”
Helen held up her finger, and glanced from her father to the traveller, and then to her father again.
“Certainly,—pulsatilla!” muttered the homoeopathist, and ensconcing himself in his own corner, he also sought to sleep. But after vain efforts, accompanied by restless gestures and movements, he suddenly started up, and again extracted his phial-book.
“What the deuce are they to me?” he muttered. “Morbid sensibility of character—coffee? No!—accompanied by vivacity and violence—nux!” He brought his book to the window, contrived to read the label on a pigmy bottle. “Nux! that’s it,” he said,—and he swallowed a globule!
“Now,” quoth he, after a pause, “I don’t care a straw for the misfortunes of other people; nay, I have half a mind to let down the window.”
Helen looked up.
“But I’ll not,” he added resolutely; and this time he fell fairly asleep.