It was Mrs. Tarnley.
“Will you get her some water, or whatever she ought to have, I think she is ill, and pray be quick.”
With a dark prying look Mildred glanced from one to the other.
“It’s in a mad-house and not here the like of her should be, wi’ them fits and frenzies,” she muttered as she applied herself to the resuscitation of the Dutchwoman.
On her toilet was a little group of bottles labelled “Sal-volatile,” “Asafœtida,” “Valerian.”
“I don’t know which is the right one, but this can’t be far wrong,” she remarked, selecting the sal-volatile, and dropping some into the water.
“La! so it was a sort o’ fit. See how stiff she was. Lor’ bless us, I do wish she was under a mad doctor. See how her feet’s stuck out, and her thumbs tight shut in her fists, and her teeth set,” and old Mildred applied the sal-volatile phial to the patient’s nostrils, and gradually got her into a drowsy, yawning state, in which she seemed to care and comprehend little or nothing of where she was or what had befallen her.
“Tell her I stayed till I saw her better, if she asks, and that I’m coming back again. She says she is hurt.”
“So much the better,” said Mildred; “that will keep her from prowling about the house like a cat or a ghost, as she did, all night, and no good came of it.”
“And will you look to her wrist: she cut it last night, and it is very clumsily tied up, and I’ll come again, tell her.”