Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/36

6 of which produced that indescribably painful feeling which, we fear, many of our readers who have heard the sound in a sick chamber can easily recall. A large tester-bed stood opposite to this table, and the looking-glass partially reflected curtains of a faded stripe, and ever and anon, (as the position of the sufferer followed the restless emotion of a disordered mimd) glimpses of the face of one on whom Death was rapidly hastening. Beside this bed now stood Dummie, a small, thin man, dressed in a tattered plush jerkin, from which the rain-drops slowly dripped, and with a thin, yellow, cunning physiognomy, grotesquely hideous in feature but not positively villainous in expression. On the other side of the bed stood a little boy of about three years old, dressed as if belonging to the better classes, although the garb was somewhat tattered and discoloured. The poor child trembled violently, and evidently looked with a feeling of relief on the entrance of Dummie. And now there slowly, and with many a pthisicalphthisical [sic] sigh, heaved towards the foot of the bed the heavy frame of the woman who had accosted Dummie below, and had followed him,