Chapter 12 - Page 2

moist, but your eye fiery, and cheek flushed. Oh! I must examine
more closely into these symptoms."

"Softly, my good friend, softly," said the youth, falling back on his
pillow, and losing some of that color which alarmed his companion. "I
believe, in extracting the ball, you did for me all that is required. I
am free from pain and only weak, I do assure you."

"Captain Singleton," said the surgeon, with heat, "it is presumptuous in
you to pretend to tell your medical attendant when you are free from
pain. If it be not to enable us to decide in such matters, of what avail
the lights of science? For shame, George, for shame! Even that perverse
fellow, John Lawton, could not behave with more obstinacy."

His patient smiled, as he gently repulsed his physician in an attempt to
undo the bandages, and with a returning glow to his cheeks, inquired,--

"Do, Archibald,"--a term of endearment that seldom failed to soften the
operator's heart,--"tell me what spirit from heaven has been gliding
around my apartment, while I lay pretending to sleep?"

"If anyone interferes with my patients," cried the doctor, hastily, "I
will teach them, spirit or no spirit, what it is to meddle with another
man's concerns."

"Tut--my dear fellow, there was no interference made, nor any intended.
See," exhibiting the bandages, "everything is as you left it,--but it
glided about the room with the grace of a fairy and the tenderness of
an angel."

The surgeon, having satisfied himself that everything was as he had left
it, very deliberately resumed his seat and replaced his wig, as he
inquired, with a brevity that would have honored Lieutenant Mason,--

"Had it petticoats, George?"

"I saw nothing but its heavenly eyes--its bloom--its majestic step--its
grace," replied the young man, with rather more ardor than his surgeon
thought consistent with his debilitated condition; and he laid his hand
on his mouth to stop him, saying himself,--

"It must have been Miss Jeanette Peyton--a lady of fine accomplishments,
with--hem--with something of the kind of step you speak of--a very
complacent eye; and as to the bloom, I dare say offices of charity can
summon as fine a color to her cheeks, as glows in the faces of her more
youthful nieces."

"Nieces? Has she nieces, then? The angel I saw may be a daughter, a
sister, or a niece,--but never an aunt."

"Hush, George, hush; your talking has brought your pulse up again. You
must observe quiet, and prepare for a meeting with your own sister, who
will be here within an hour."

"What, Isabella!