What quaint, pale, grave little maids we were! As full of aches and pains, and small anxieties, and self-repression, and tender sympathy, as any other daughters of Mother Eve.
Eleanor and I have often since said that we believe we should make excellent nurses for the insane, looking back upon our treatment of poor Matilda. We knew exactly when to be authoritative, and when to sympathize almost abjectly. I became skilful in what we called “nursing her head,” which meant much more than that I supported it on my knees. Softly, but firmly, I stroked her brow and temples with both hands, and passed my fingers through her hair to the back of her head. I rarely failed to put her to sleep, and as she never woke when I laid her down, I have since suspected myself of unconscious mesmerism.
One night, when I had long been asleep, I was awakened by Matilda’s hysterical sobs. She “couldn’t get into a comfortable position;” her “back ached so.” Our bed was very narrow, and I commonly lay so poised upon the outer edge to give Matilda room that more than once I have rolled on to the floor.
We spoke in undertones, but Eleanor was awake.
“Come and see if you can sleep with me, Margery,” she said. “I lie very straight.”
I scrambled out, and willingly crept in behind Eleanor, into her still narrower bed; and after tearful thanks and protestations, poor Matilda doubled herself at a restful angle, and fell asleep.
Happily for me, I was very well. Eleanor suffered from the utter change of mode of life a good deal; but she had great powers of endurance.
Fatigue, and “muddle on the brain,” often hindered her at night from learning the lessons for next day. But she worked at them nevertheless; and tasks, that by her own account she “drove into her head” in bed, though she was quite unable to say them that evening, seemed to arrange themselves properly in her memory before the morning.
Matilda’s ill-health came to a crisis at last. To smother a cough successfully, you must be able to escape at intervals. On one occasion the smothering was tried too long, and after the aggravated outburst which ensued, the doctor was called in. The Bush House family practitioner being absent, a new man came for him, who, after a few glances at Matilda, postponed the examination of her lungs, and begged to see Miss Mulberry.
Matilda had learned her last lesson in Bush House.