bring in a verdict of suicide. If anyone is to blame it must be myself, for not insisting that he should take the quinine then and there in my surgery.'
The Coroner thanked Dr Knight for his frankness, confessed himself satisfied with the evidence, and 'suicide while under the delusive influence of a malarial fever' was the verdict returned by the jury. When I afterwards complimented Dr Knight on the fertility of his invention, he made no reply.
Mrs Thornton, as I have said, disputed the will in so far as it denied her a mother's natural rights. It was also disputed by a Mr Shallcross, who represented himself as Colonel Brookes's heir-at-law; he pleaded that the Colonel had not been of sound mind for the past three years, as large bequests to the drunken and sordid woman who made his existence a living hell sufficiently proved. The Court found that the Colonel had been of sound mind, save during his occasional bouts of malaria, and therefore had the right to bestow his property at pleasure. He had, however, wrongly described the child as 'Ann Brookes', and wrongly assumed the right to appoint guardians for her. Nevertheless, Mr Shallcross's evidence, and the testator's own considered opinion, made it apparent that the child stood in want of suitable protectors. The Court also ruled that the testamentary language was not sufficiently forcible to convey the estate to mother and child absolutely, but gave them only a life interest in it. At their decease, it must become the property of Mr Shallcross, or whoever else might then be the late Colonel's heir-at- law. The estate was therefore thrown into Chancery, the costs of the trial deducted from its value, and Anne Thornton made a ward in Chancery. The Court appointed Dr Knight and me her guardians, at the charge of the estate; and the Colonel's wishes were, in effect, respected— except that the value of the estate, after the lawyers had been satisfied, was whittled to less than a half, and that Annie's fortune now consisted solely of a two hundred pound life-annuity, purchased for her by us.
Well, as little Annie Thornton's guardian, and a married man, it was only natural that I should take her to live in my house, where I put her under the same governess as my own children. And let me tell you, Sir, that I never had a moment's cause to regret my action. That girl was a paragon of virtue, and had not an enemy in the whole world. Though painfully sensible of her false position as an illegitimate child—even if one of independent means— and as being banished for her own good from the society of an ill-bred and dissipated mother, yet she trusted in the kindness of God; showing in all her looks and actions the profoundest gratitude to Dr Knight and myself for the care bestowed on her. We had no scruple in referring to her as 'Annie Brookes', and thus keeping alive in her mind the nobler part of her natural inheritance.
Soon after Annie's arrival in our house, my wife had the misfortune to be struck down by an incurable disease. Though still only a little girl, Annie insisted on acting as sick-nurse, and her intrinsic kindness of heart and constant vigilance by night as well as by day were something more than surprising. My poor wife's sufferings terminated six weeks later. Annie wept bitterly; and after a decent interval I married again, for the sake of my children. What I had done to deserve further chastening by Heaven, Heaven alone can say; but as the result of a fall on a slippery road my new wife miscarried in the first year of our marriage; and the complications of this accident were also mortal in their effect. Once again Annie played the ministering angel, and was constantly at the sufferer's sick-bed; not only to administer medicine and perform the often distasteful duties of a nurse, but to give her spiritual consolation in the dark hours of the night when sleep was far, and pain unabating. Indeed, Annie combined three noble professions in those sad months: those of doctor, nurse and clergyman. She was reduced to a mere shadow when my wife's death at last released her from these self-imposed tasks.
I did my best to restore Annie's spirits, as soon as the period of mourning ended, by arranging treats and excursions for the family; and little by little her natural gaiety returned. But Dr Knight and I agreed that the time had come when she must go to a finishing school; and we unluckily decided upon one recommended by his cousin, Dr Tylecote of Haywood—the medical man whose then assistant was none other than William Palmer.
Miss Bond's school enjoyed, and still enjoys, a high reputation for good schooling in all ladylike accomplishments—Annie learned to play the pianoforte there in a quite masterly way—and the girls were, it need hardly be added, under continuous surveillance. It happened once or twice, however, that Palmer, as Dr Tylecote's assistant, was sent to visit the school, when a girl had been overcome by a colic, or cut her finger, or had suffered some other slight accident which lay within Palmer's limited powers to alleviate. On one occasion the sufferer was Annie, and it appears that he treated a strained ligament in her ankle with such gentleness that she fell head over heels in love with him—though he had no suspicion of her feelings, being busily engaged at the time in an intrigue with a red-headed girl from Liverpool, the stepdaughter of a local gardener. Moreover, Annie happened to be very advantageously seated in church, for her pew commanded Palmer's profile at a short distance, straight across the aisle.
My quarrel with Mr Weaver grew out of this unfortunate affair. His elder daughter had also been sent to Miss Bond's finishing school, and one day, in the course of general conversation, she chanced to reveal Axinie's secret attachment to Palmer, for which the girls were teasing her unmercifully. Weaver mentally noted the fact and, when Palmer was about to inherit his seven thousand pounds, and asked him to arrange for their conveyance, brought it out. 'Do you want a wife, Mr Palmer?' asks he. 'For if you do, I can introduce you to a very pretty young girl with a snug little fortune. She's a ward in Chancery. Colonel Brookes, her father, left her eight thousand pounds, which gives her a secure income of two hundred pounds a year.'
'There is nothing I should like better,' says Palmer, 'but can you be sure that this beauty would look twice at me?'
' Indeed, I can,' Mr Weaver answers.' She has fallen deep in love with you already. Annie Brookes is eighteen years old, and highly accomplished.'
Yet Mr Weaver was fully acquainted with the circumstances of Palmer's leaving his appointment in Liverpool, and of his ill-behaviour at Dr Tylecote s; and doubtless also of his profligate life while walking the wards in Stafford Infirmary. To encourage such a depraved young man to marry my Annie for her money was nothing short of criminal; and so I told him to his face.
STAFFORD INFIRMARY
STAFFORD, an ancient borough and market-town celebrated for its red bricks, its shoes, and its salt works, contains no less than thirteen thousand inhabitants; of whom at least three thousand (or so we were assured by the landlord of The Junction Hotel) are usually sober—reckoning children among that number. As seen from the railway, the town appears, at this season, like an island lying in a yellowish lake. The farmers here flood their meadows to manure them, and the aptly named River Sow is therefore divided into a dozen or more streams, which career crazily along with their discoloured waters, in haste to hurl themselves into the swollen Trent below.
All the new houses are built in brick so red that it hurts the eyes —as though one were staring at a fire—and capped by ugly slate roofs. Yet cross the long wooden bridge with its white railings, near the railway station, turn around by a flour mill and follow the lane until you reach Greengate Street'; and there you will find a charming row of old half-timbered houses on either side of the street, some large, some small, but all with heavy carved gables, and warm-coloured plaster set between the dark-brown timbers.
One house close to the Market Place is well worth a visit. Its great forehead hangs halfway over the pavement, with large bay windows like four-poster bedsteads let into the wall. The pale oaken beams standing out from the plaster-work are arranged in a variety of graceful lines that recall the tattooing on the body of a South Sea blander. Messrs Jenkinson & Co., linen-drapers, occupy the premises, and their shop window is decked out with every article 'that fashion can require or beauty desire*—as an advertisement informs us. Festoons of pink and blue ribbon elegantly droop from side to side, and bright yellow driving gloves are arranged in straight lines across the panes. At the entrance door, a bundle of coloured silk parasols and another of sober black umbrellas are stacked like so many halberds in an armoury; and through the bay windows above you can see piles of blue hat- boxes, tall slabs of linen cloth, and portly canvas blocks of unpacked goods, bound around with bands of iron, as if to keep their figures in. Mr Jenkinson, the proprietor, will be introduced to our readers presently.
Meanwhile, here is the Town Hall, towering up from the Market Place, with a clock stuck against it like a target. It can hardly be called a pretty building, having no more ornament than a blank sheet of writing paper, and the windows are mere holes in the wall; but at least it is built of Portland stone, not red brick. On either side of it stand half-timbered houses, with cock-hat roofs and their fronts slashed like a soldier's uniform, which lend its pallid stucco walls a certain aristocratic dignity, as it might be an austere and gloomy Tsar surrounded by his merry Muscovite bodyguard. Then, for Tsarina, you have the tall, white, square tower of St Mary's, a church founded by King John, and famous for its memorial to Stafford's most celebrated son—Izaak Walton, the Angler. Passing the Grammar School, an ancient foundation enlarged by King Edward VI, you will observe a dozen or more inns; an
