'Ah, I see,' he said, with a certain tone of satisfaction, 'for once
there will be a case properly treated. Now, Ethel, you and I will
show what intelligent nursing can do.'

'I believe you are delighted,' growled Aubrey.

'So should you be, at the valuable precedent you will afford.'

'I've no notion of being experimented on to prove your theory,' said
Aubrey, still ready for lazy mischief.

For be it known that the roving-tempered Dr. Spencer had been on fire
to volunteer to the Crimean hospitals, and had unwillingly sacrificed
the project, not to Dr. May's conviction that it would be fatal in
his present state of health, but to Ethel's private entreaty that he
would not add to her father's distress in the freshness of Margaret's
death, and the parting with Norman. He had never ceased to mourn
over the lost opportunity, and to cast up to his friend the
discoveries he might have made; while Dr. May declared that if by any
strange chance he had come back at all, he would have been so rabid
on improved nursing and sanatory measures, that there would have been
no living with him.

It must be owned that Dr. May was not very sensible to what his
friend called Stoneborough stinks. The place was fairly healthy, and
his 'town councillor's conservatism,' and hatred of change, as well
as the amusement of skirmishing, had always made him the champion of
things as they were; and in the present emergency the battle whether
the enemy had travelled by infection, or was the product of the Pond