She complained, however, of slight illness, and went
to bed without taking anything calculated to check what she felt. Her
sufferings during the night were dreadful: high fever had set in with a
fury that threatened to sweep the powers of life like a wreck before
it. The next morning the family, on looking into her state more closely,
found it necessary to send instantly for a physician.
On arriving, he pronounced her to be in a dangerous pleurisy, from
which, in consequence of her plethoric habit, he expressed but faint
hopes of her recovery. This was melancholy intelligence to her sons and
daughters: but to Peter, whose faithful wife she had been for thirty
years, it was a dreadful communication indeed.
"No hopes, Docthor!" he exclaimed, with a bewildered air: "did you say
no hopes, sir?--Oh! no, you didn't--you couldn't say that there's no
hopes!"
"The hopes of her recovery, Mr. Connell, are but slender,--if any."
"Docthor, I'm a rich man, thanks be to God an' to----" he hesitated,
cast back a rapid and troubled look towards the bed whereon she lay,
then proceeded--"no matther, I'm a rich man: but if you can spare her to
me, I'll divide what I'm worth in the world wid you: I will, sir; an' if
that won't do, I'll give up my last shillin' to save her, an' thin I'd
beg my bit an' sup through the counthry, only let me have her wid me.
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