MISS HAMILTON'S LITTLE SCHOLAR Miss Darrell's innuendoes were not to be borne with any degree of patience.

Mr.Hamilton's opinion might be nothing to me,--how often I repeated that!--but all the same I owed it to my dignity to seek an explanation with him.
The opportunity came the very next day.
He called to speak to me about a new patient, a little cripple boy who had broken his arm; the father was a labourer, and there were ten children, and the mother took in washing.

'Poor Robin has not much chance of good nursing,' he went on; 'Mrs.Bell is not a bad mother, as mothers go, but she is overworked and overburdened; she has a good bit of difficulty in keeping her husband out of the alehouse.

Good heavens! what lives these women lead! it is to be hoped that it will be made up to them in another world: no washing-tubs and ale-houses there, no bruised bodies and souls, eh, Miss Garston ?' Mr.Hamilton was talking in his usual fashion; he had taken the arm-chair I had offered him, and seemed in no hurry to leave it, although his dinner-hour was approaching.

When he had given me full directions about Robin, and I had promised to go to him directly after my breakfast the next morning, I said to him in quite a careless manner that I hoped Miss Hamilton was well and had sustained no ill effects from her visit to me.
'Oh no: she is better than usual.