“Well, well; so it will be all done. Tare alive! if myself knows how you're able to keep an eye on everything. Come in, an' let us have our tay.”
For a few months after this, Ellish was perfectly in her element. The jaunting-car was procured; and her spirits seemed to be quite elevated. She paid regular visits to both her sons, looked closely into their manner of conducting business, examined their premises, and subjected every fixture and improvement made or introduced without her sanction, to the most rigorous scrutiny. In fact, what, between Peter's farm, her daughter's shop, and the establishments of her sons, she never found herself more completely encumbered with business. She had intended “to make her soul,” but her time was so fully absorbed by the affairs of those in whom she felt so strong an interest, that she really forgot the spiritual resolution in the warmth of her secular pursuits.
One evening, about this time, a horse belonging to Peter happened to fall into a ditch, from which he was extricated with much difficulty by the laborers. Ellish, who thought it necessary to attend, had been standing for some time directing them how to proceed; her dress was rather thin, and the hour, which was about twilight, chilly, for it was the middle of autumn. Upon returning home she found herself cold, and inclined to shiver. At first she thought but little of these symptoms; for having never had a single day's sickness, she was scarcely competent to know that they were frequently the forerunners of very dangerous and fatal maladies. She complained, however, of slight illness, and went to bed without taking anything calculated to check what she felt. Her sufferings during the night were dreadful: high fever had set in with a fury that threatened to sweep the powers of life like a wreck before it. The next morning the family, on looking into her state more closely, found it necessary to send instantly for a physician.
On arriving, he pronounced her to be in a dangerous pleurisy, from which, in consequence of her plethoric habit, he expressed but faint hopes of her recovery. This was melancholy intelligence to her sons and daughters: but to Peter, whose faithful wife she had been for thirty years, it was a dreadful communication indeed.
“No hopes, Docthor!” he exclaimed, with a bewildered air: “did you say no hopes, sir?—Oh! no, you didn't—you couldn't say that there's no hopes!”
“The hopes of her recovery, Mr. Connell, are but slender,—if any.”
“Docthor, I'm a rich man, thanks be to God an' to——” he hesitated, cast back a rapid and troubled look towards the bed whereon she lay, then proceeded—“no matther, I'm a rich man: but if you can spare her to me, I'll divide what I'm worth in the world wid you: I will, sir; an' if that won't do, I'll give up my last shillin' to save her, an' thin I'd beg my bit an' sup through the counthry, only let me have her wid me.”
“As far as my skill goes,” said the doctor, “I shall, of course, exert it to save her; but there are some diseases which we are almost always able to pronounce fatal at first sight. This, I fear, is one of them. Still I do not bid you despair—there is, I trust, a shadow of hope.”
“The blessin' o' the Almighty be upon you, sir, for that word! The best blessing of the heavenly Father rest upon you an' yours for it!”
“I shall return in the course of the day,” continued the physician; “and as you feel the dread of her loss so powerfully, I will bring two other medical gentlemen of skill with me.”