“I am getting ill I shall faint,” said Mrs. Ricketts, retiring upon a well-cushioned sofa from the calamity.
Martha now flew to the bell-rope and pulled it violently, while Purvis threw open the window, and with such rash haste as to upset a stand of camellias, thereby scattering plants, buds, earth, and crockery over the floor, while poor Kate, thunderstruck at the avalanche of ruin around her, leaned against the wall for support, unable to stir or even speak. As Martha continued to tug away at the bell, the alarm, suggesting the idea of fire, brought three or four servants to the door together.
“Madeira! quick, Madeira!” cried Martha, as she unloosed various articles of dress from her sister's throat, and prepared a plan of operations for resuscitation that showed at least an experienced hand.
“Bring wine,” said Kate, faintly, to the astonished butler, who, not noticing Miss Ricketts's order, seemed to await hers.
“Madeira! it must be Madeira!” cried Martha, wildly.
“She don't dislike Mar-Mar-Marco-brunner,” whispered Purvis to the servant, “and I'll take a glass too.”
Had the irruption been one of veritable housebreakers, had the occasion been what newspapers stereotype as a “Daring Burglary,” Kate Dalton might, in all likelihood, have distinguished herself as a heroine. She would, it is more than probable, have evinced no deficiency either of courage or presence of mind, but in the actual contingency nothing could be more utterly helpless than she proved; and, as she glided into a chair, her pale face and trembling features betrayed more decisive signs of suffering than the massive countenance which Martha was now deluging with eau-de-Cologne and lavender.
The wine soon made its appearance; a very imposing array of restoratives the ambulatory pharmacopeia of the Ricketts family was all displayed upon a table. Martha, divested of shawl, bonnet, and gloves, stood ready for action; and thus, everything being in readiness, Mrs. Ricketts, whose consideration never suffered her to take people unawares, now began her nervous attack in all form.
If ague hysterics recovery from drowning tic-doloureux, and an extensive burn had all sent representatives of their peculiar agonies, with injunctions to struggle for a mastery of expression, the symptoms could scarcely have equalled those now exhibited. There was not a contortion nor convulsion that her countenance did not undergo, while the devil's tattoo, kept up by her heels upon the floor, and her knuckles occasionally on the table, and now and then on Scroope's head, added fearfully to the effect of her screams, which varied from the deep groan of the melodrame to the wildest shrieks of tragedy.
“There's no danger, Miss Dalton,” whispered Martha, whose functions of hand-rubbing, temple-bathing, wine-giving, and so forth, were performed with a most jog-trot regularity.