promised faithful observance
of directions. He was left, therefore, for the present, in their hands.
    Doubtless, they executed the trust to the best of their ability; but
something got wrong: the bandages were displaced, or tampered with; great loss
of blood followed. MacTurk, being summoned, came with steed afoam. He was one of
those surgeons whom it is dangerous to vex: abrupt in his best moods; in his
worst, savage. On seeing Moore's state, he relieved his feelings by a little
flowery language, with which it is not necessary to strew the present page. A
bouquet or two of the choicest blossoms fell on the unperturbed head of one Mr.
Graves, a stony young assistant, he usually carried about with him; with a
second nosegay he gifted another young gentleman in his train: an interesting
fac-simile of himself, being, indeed, his own son; but the full corbeille of
blushing bloom fell to the lot of meddling womankind, en masse.
    For the best part of one winter night, himself and satellites were busied
about Moore. There, at his bedside, shut up alone with him in his chamber, they
wrought and wrangled over his exhausted frame. They three were on one side of
the bed, and Death on the other. The conflict was sharp: it lasted till day
broke, when the balance between the belligerents seemed so equal that both
parties might have claimed the victory.
    At dawn, Graves and young MacTurk were left in charge of the patient, while
the senior went himself in search of additional strength, and secured it in the
person of Mrs. Horsfall, the best nurse on his staff. To this woman he gave
Moore in charge, with the sternest injunctions respecting the responsibility
laid on her shoulders. She took this responsibility stolidly, as she did also
the easy chair at the bed-head. That moment she began her reign.
    Mrs. Horsfall had one virtue, - orders received from MacTurk she obeyed to
the letter: the Ten Commandments were less binding in her eyes than her
surgeon's dictum. In other respects, she was no woman, but a dragon. Hortense
Moore fell effaced before her; Mrs. Yorke withdrew - crushed: yet both these
women were personages of some dignity in their own estimation, and of some bulk
in the estimation of others. Perfectly cowed by the breadth, the height, the
bone, and the brawn of Mrs. Horsfall, they retreated to the back-parlour. She,
for her part, sat upstairs when she liked, and down-