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166 Notting Hill and see Nurse James, who was very ill.

"Good old chappie, here we are," said the flushed, dishevelled-looking woman, who, with her loose hair hanging round her shoulders, which were covered by a brilliant dressing-jacket, sat up in bed, the wild stare of delirium in her eyes.

"Coming to sit with me and see all the devils?—thousands of them; and they're all got up like tom-tits, see—all over the bed?—I keep on catching them. There's another," and she made a motion of seizing a fluttering bird and wringing its neck.

"That one's done for—now let's have a drink; half and half champagne and brandy, fizz and cognac for two—garçon!"

She was in the grip of alcoholic poisoning.

I called for the landlady.

"She must have someone to sit with her and look after her," I said. "Has she any friends or relatives that you know of? She would never open her mouth on the subject to me."

"I don't know of anyone, sorr," answered the corpulent, and almost blue-faced Irish-woman. "Nobody's ever-r come to see her-r, savin' your worship."