Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 11.pdf/536

 Leaves from an English Solicitors Note Book.

499

Night was now coming on. Barbara the my burning eyelids came as a merciful relief faithful old housekeeper who had nursed and the fever left my brain. I lay down on Dorothy in her childhood, came in to tell me my own bed, and fell off into a soft sleep. I know not how long that blessed sleep that the poor sorrowing sister had regained some degree of composure, and was settling lasted, but I was startled by hearing a cry, down for the night, and it was hoped that a a sudden cry from the death chamber, few hours of sleep would tend to restore her, " What, Margaret, you here! Where am I? and enable her to see me on the morrow, Is it all a dream? O, my own sweet sister and so I sought the solitude of my usual Margaret, you here beside me! bedroom, in which I had passed many happy Yes. It was no dream. The angel of nights of calm unbroken sleep in happier pity had come down from Heaven and driven times, when I had no dread of the rising of away the dark angel, who had at pity's com an awful morning to disturb my peaceful mand yielded up her prey. And Mary lived, slumber. Oh, how I longed and prayed for and lay clasped in the fond arms of her just a few hours of sweet dreamless sleep, to sister. Dr. Harrington had been wrong for once. refresh my poor fevered brain and bring back the natural powers and energies of my mind. He had mistaken syncope for death; the Sleep was out of the question, I could only strong love of the sorrowing mourner which had led her to the dark chamber, even to toss on my bed, and hug my misery. placing herself by the side of the cold form, And, as I lay tossing upon my bed, I heard had brought warmth and life to her whom a slight sound as of some one moving along he had pronounced dead. And there was no the passage. Noiselessly I opened my door intestacy. That point was settled once and and saw a sight enough to stagger the bravest forever before I left Croomedenc of men. I saw the poor bereft sister stealing And silently into the chamber of death. I followed professional character was cleared. her, as she stepped into the room, and heard when at last the grim old Reaper came with her piteous appeal to the cold form on his sickle keen to reap his harvest, in mercy the bed, " O Mary, my own sweet sister, he took the two loving sisters within a few why has God taken you and left me alone! hours of each other, loving in their lives, and How can I live without you! O God, in in death not divided. And Dorothy, I beg your pardon, Mrs. mercy take me too! I cannot live alone." And then the poor old lady worn out with Cecil Harrington, it was your sweet face that her grief, threw herself on the bed of death, did all the mischief, and made that husband with one arm round the neck of the cold of yours neglectful of his duties, and of his sleeping form, and her aged head pillowed master's reputation, and set him thinking on the cold heart; and thus she sank off into that Mary and Margaret were all the same sleep beside the form she had loved so well so long as Dorothy was Dorothy. But you in life. must not let him do such a thing again in The sight unmanned mc, I am not ashamed his practice, because there is an ugly name to own it; but the tears that now burst from for it, " Professional Negligence."
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