'Stop that whining, Maggie—stop that foolish whining; I will not hef it!' said the piper, turning upon his daughter fiercely, who tried in vain to repress a sob as Angus disappeared.
'O Sandy Buchanan, it iss muckle that ye'll hef to answer for, if ye'll make me that I'll hate my own father too,' said the poor girl, storming out into open mutiny.
'Leave the room, Maggie!' cried the piper, waving his hand. The maiden gladly availed herself of her dismissal, and fled to the solitude of her own room. 'Cott has not gifen to women the brains to understand pusiness,' he continued, generalising apologetically to his guest.
A week passed, and the piper's wrath against the clan MacTavish endured. The feud was not one-sided. Mr MacTavish replied to a letter full of nothing, expressed in the bitterest legal phraseology, written by Sandy Buchanan on the piper's behalf, by a document of elaborate counter-charges, written by the banker-lawyer of the town, breathing threatenings and lawsuits. And the case promised to be profitable to both of these astute gentlemen, as such cases generally manage to be.
[HINTS TO SICK-NURSES.]
Trying as are many, indeed we may truly say most of the duties of the sick-room, nothing renders them so much so as the fact that the disease under which the patient is suffering is of an infectious, or of a contagious nature.
There is a great deal to be said on the head of avoidance of infection or contagion, while nursing a sufferer through disease of either one nature or the other. In this as in all other matters connected with sick-nursing, heroic, would-be-martyr-like conduct is absurd and blamable, for prudence goes for a great deal, and indiscretion brings trouble and suffering on others as well as yourself. 'I don't mind what risk I run; I am too anxious to think about myself!' always seems to us a feeble and (to use a strong northern word) a very feckless sort of remark, only made, in nine cases out of ten, to exact the tribute of a surprised or admiring look. On the contrary, the aim and end of every sick-nurse should be to do as much good and be as much comfort as possible with the least possible risk. To achieve this, the smallest and most apparently trivial precautions are worth taking, in order to prevent the friends and relatives about you having the additional trouble and anxiety of nursing you as a second invalid, just when 'number one' is recovering.
'I am so anxious I can't eat! I haven't touched a morsel to-day!' are by no means uncommon remarks to hear from the lips of some one who is nursing, or assisting to nurse a case of infectious disease. Yet this abstinence is just the very worst thing you can possibly do under such circumstances, and the most calculated to render yourself an easy prey to that unseen influence pervading the air, and like the seeds of some poisonous plant, ready to take root if soil be found favourable to its growth. Feebleness, over-weariness, exhaustion, want of sufficient nourishment—all these things aid in preparing this suitable soil, and woo the disease germs that are floating about in the air to take root and bring forth bitter fruit. A vigorous cheerful person, capable of strong self-control, often seems able to defy the closest contact with disease; and even if some malaise (often closely allied to the disease of the patient) knocks over the willing nurse for a time, the elastic constitution of body and mind seems to throw off the poison, and no serious illness results. Nothing is more common than the occurrence of these spurious attacks of illness, allied to that from which the person nursed is suffering, and the following case is an example.
A lady nursing a friend in small-pox, after lengthened attendance in the sick-room, was attacked by faintness, shivering, a sensation of nausea, and violent headache. Both the nurse and her friends concluded that a seizure of the loathsome disease from which the patient was suffering was inevitable. However, the following day several large blotches appeared on various parts of the body; all unpleasant symptoms gradually disappeared; and in a day or two—without the original sufferer having had any idea that her nurse was kept away by anything more serious than need of rest—she was able to return to her duties, and never suffered any further deterioration of health. In the same way we have known those who were nursing cases of fever to be suddenly attacked by sore throat, headache, and vertigo, these symptoms passing off after twenty-four or forty-eight hours, and no further evil resulting. A vigorous constitution, care while nurse-tending as to diet and exercise, joined to a mind calm and equable, and ready to face all possibilities without flurry, feverish excitement, or fear, will in many cases enable the sick-nurse to throw off the seeds of disease. But a malignant influence which floats in the atmosphere of the sick-room, pervading the breath of the sick person, and hanging like a bad odour about the bed-clothes, carpets, and even the wall-paper of the room, is necessarily a difficult enemy to evade—and such is infection. And any one who has a timorous dread of it is far better away from the sick-room.