Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/472

 464 own boisterous fashion; so that altogether Nurse Pepperfly presented a somewhat bewildered and untidy appearance. She wore pattens and white stockings, the latter a mass of splashes, and very distinctly visible from the shortness of the gown; but the extraordinary rotundity of Mrs. Pepperfly’s person seemed almost to preclude the possibility of any gown’s being made long enough to hide her legs. She took off her pattens when close to the coroner, and held them in one hand; her umbrella, dripping with rain, being in the other. A remarkable umbrella, apparently more for show than use, since its sticks and wires projected a full foot at the bottom through the gingham, and there was no handle visible at the top. There was a smothered smile at her appearance when she came in, and her evidence caused some diversion, not only in itself, but from the various honorary titles she persisted in according to the coroner and jury.

“Your name’s Pepperfly?” began the coroner.

“Which it is, my lord, with Betsy added to it,” was the response, given with as deep a curtsy as the witness’s incumbrances of person would allow her.

“You mean Elizabeth?” said the coroner, raising his pen from his note-book, and waiting.

“Your worship, I never knowed myself called by any thing but Betsy. It may be as ‘Lizabeth was written in the register at my baptism, but I can’t speak to it. Mother”

“That will do,” said the coroner, and after a few more questions he came to the chief point. “Did you take in some medicine last Monday evening for the lady you were nursing—Mrs. Crane?”

“Yes, my lord, I did. It were a composing draught; leastways, that’s what it ought to have been.”

“What time was that?”

“It were after dark, sir, and I was at my supper.”

“Can’t you tell the time?”

“It must have struck eight, I think, your worship, for I had begun to feel dreadful peckish afore I went down, and eight o’clock’s my supper hour. I had just finished it, sir, when the ring came; it were pickled herrings that we had”

“The jury do not want to know what you had for supper; confine yourself to the necessary points. Who brought the medicine?”

“That boy of the Mr. Greys: Dick. An insolent young rascal, Mr. Mayor, as you ever set eyes on. He whips up the cover of his basket, and out he takes a small bottle wrapped in white paper and gives it me. I should like to tell you, my lord, what he said to me.”

“If it bears upon the case, you can tell it,” replied the coroner.

Now, Mother Pepperfly,’ said he, ‘how are you off for Old Tom to-night?’ My fingers tingled to get at his ears, my lord mayor and corporation, but he backed out of my reach.”

Mrs. Pepperfly in her indignation had turned round to the jury, expecting their sympathy, and the room burst into a laugh.

“He backed away out of my reach, gentlemen, afeard of getting his deserts, and he stopped in the middle of the road and made a mocking face at me, knowing I’d no chance of getting to him, for they are as lissome as cats, them boys, and I’m rather stout to set up a run.”

“I told you to confine yourself to evidence,” said the coroner, in a reproving tone. “What did you do with the medicine?”

“I took it up-stairs, gentlefolks, and Mr. Carlton came out of the lady’s room, for he had just called in, and asked what it was I had got. I said it was the sleeping draught from Mr. Grey’s, and he took it out of my hand, and said how it smelt of oil of almonds.”

“Oil of almonds? Are you sure that’s what he said?”

“Of course I am sure,” retorted Mrs. Pepperfly, “I didn’t dream it. He took out the cork and he smelt the stuff, and then he said it. ‘What could Mr. Stephen Grey be giving her oil of almonds for?’ he said.”

“Did you smell it?”

“I can’t say I did, your lordship, much; though Mr. Carlton was surprised I couldn’t, and put it towards me but my nose hadn’t got no smell in it just at that particular moment, and so I told him.”

“Why had it not?” inquired the coroner.

Mrs. Pepperfly would have liked to evade the question. She fidgeted first on one leg, then on the other, put down her pattens and took them up again, and gave her umbrella a shake, the effect of which was to administer a shower of rain-drops to all the faces in her vicinity.

“Come,” said the coroner, sharply, “you stand there to tell the truth. If the stuff emitted so strong a smell, how was it you could not smell it?”

“I had just swallowed a wee drop of gin, sir,” replied Mrs. Pepperfly, in a subdued tone. “When my supper were over, Mrs. Gould says to me, ‘Just a drain, mum, to keep the herrings down, it’s obligatory for your health;’ and knowing I’m weak in the stomach, gentlefolks, which gets upset at nothing, I let myself be over-persuaded, and took a drain; but you couldn’t have put it into a thimble.”