Volume Two—Chapter Sixteen.
The Gilded Pill.
One morning, when the sun was making the sea shimmer and glisten like so much frosted silver in constant motion, Tom Fraser awoke, calm and placid, after a long, burning time of fever, to find the soft, pleasant face of Mrs Shingle bending over him; and, on seeing him awake, she stole gently away, and, while he lay wondering and trying to make out what it all meant, and whether it was a dream, the door once more opened, and he knew he was awake, for Jessie appeared, to creep to his bedside and clasp him in her arms.
Invalids recover fast under such circumstances. In his character of the best doctor in London, sick and injured as he was, Tom’s coming had instantaneously effected Jessie’s cure; and now, in turn, she nursed him back to health, ready to become his wife when he should ask her to crown his joy.
It was not long first; for at a meeting one day, old Hopper had proposed to Dick that they should put down so much apiece for the young folks, and this was done without their consent, the donors almost quarrelling as to who should give most.
Old Hopper won.
It was some little time after, when Richard Shingle and his wife had returned to town, that the former called upon his old friend in his chambers, where there was a long chat about the young people, and also about Max Shingle.
“Don’t you make yourself uncomfortable about him,” said Hopper gruffly. “He won’t starve as long as there’s any one to swindle. As for his wife, young Tom will see that she don’t want, and so will I, for the sake of the past.”
“Why, hallo!” cried Dick suddenly, after the conversation had turned upon music, and they had arranged for what was called “a good scrape,”—“what have you got here?”