"PEACE BE TO THIS HOUSE" I can appreciate now what my father and Nurse Bundle must have suffered during my dangerous illness.

It was not a common tie that bound my father's affections to my life.

Not only was I his son, I was his only son.

Moreover, I was the only living child of the beloved wife of his youth--all that remained to him of my fair mother.

Then I was the heir to his property, the hope of his family, and, without undue egotism, I may say, from what I have been told, that I was a quaint, original, and (thanks to Mrs.Bundle) not ill-behaved child, and that, for a while at least, I should have been much missed in the daily life of the household.
Mrs.Cadman told me, long afterwards, exactly how many days and nights Nurse Bundle passed in my sick chamber, "and never had her clothes off;" and if the wearing of clothes had been one of the sharpest torments of the Inquisition, Mrs.Cadman could not have spoken in a hollower tone, or thrown more gloom round the announcement.
That, humanly speaking, my good and loving nurse saved my life, I must ever remember with deep gratitude.