At last the culprit spoke. A low voice escaped her lips. “Oh, my head!” she cried, lifting her hands to her forehead. She staggered, but caught the door and did not fall. Some accusers might have been startled by such a cry—even silenced; not so Miss Wilcox. She was neither cruel nor violent; but she was coarse, because insensible. Having just drawn breath, she went on, harsh as ever.
Mr. Ellin, leaving the hearth, deliberately paced up the room as if he were tired of standing still, and would walk a little for a change. In returning and passing near the door and the criminal, a faint breath seemed to seek his ear, whispering his name—
“Oh, Mr. Ellin!”
The child dropped as she spoke. A curious voice—not like Mr. Ellin’s, though it came from his lips—asked Miss Wilcox to cease speaking, and say no more. He gathered from the floor what had fallen on it. She seemed overcome, but not unconscious. Resting beside Mr. Ellin, in a few minutes she again drew breath. She raised her eyes to him.
“Come, my little one; have no fear,” said he.
Reposing her head against him, she gradually became reassured. It did not cost him another word to bring her round; even that strong trembling was calmed by the mere effects of his protection. He told Miss Wilcox, with remarkable tranquillity, but still with a certain decision, that the little girl must be put to bed. He carried her upstairs, and saw her laid there himself. Returning to Miss Wilcox, he said:
“Say no more to her. Beware, or you will do more mischief than you think or wish. That kind of nature is very different from yours. It is not possible that you should like it; but let it alone. We will talk more on the subject to-morrow. Let me question her.”
Under Chloroform.
Most people take an interest in any authentic account of the mode in which important surgical operations are performed, whenever opportunity is offered of gratifying their very natural curiosity. Such opportunities are however somewhat rare. The columns of the newspaper press not unfrequently supply brief, and sometimes curiously incorrect, particulars of the injuries resulting from “an appalling accident” of the night previous, to some unfortunate workman who has fallen from a scaffold, or been mutilated by a railway train. Scraps of hearsay are eagerly gathered up by the penny-a-liner, who, like the fireman’s dog of notorious ubiquity, is always first on the spot after the occurrence of a catastrophe; and a remarkable combination of technical phrases culled from the brief remarks of the surgeon in attendance, and from the slender stock which has accumulated in the reporter’s brain from previous experiences, makes its appearance in to-morrow’s daily journals, and is certain to be reproduced in all the weeklies of Saturday next. Then it is the great public learns with profound horror that some poor victim’s shoulder-joint has been dislocated in three places, that the carotid artery was pronounced (surgeons are invariably said to “pronounce”) to be fractured, or that there was great contusion and ecchymosis (always a trying word for the compositor) about the spine, and that amputation would probably be necessary.