‘This poor little Marchioness has been wearing herself to death!’ cried Dick.

‘No I haven’t,’ she returned, ‘not a bit of it. Don’t you mind about me. I like sitting up, and I’ve often had a sleep, bless you, in one of them chairs. But if you could have seen how you tried to jump out o’ winder, and if you could have heard how you used to keep on singing and making speeches, you wouldn’t have believed it — I’m so glad you’re better, Mr Liverer.’

‘Liverer indeed!’ said Dick thoughtfully, ‘It’s well I am a liverer. I strongly suspect I should have died, Marchioness, but for you.’

At this point, Mr Swiveller took the small servant’s hand in his again, and being, as we have seen, but poorly, might in struggling to express his thanks have made his eyes as red as hers, but that she quickly changed the theme by making him lie down, and urging him to keep very quiet.

‘The doctor,’ she told him, ‘said you was to be kept quite still, and there was to be no noise nor nothing. Now, take a rest, and then we’ll talk again. I’ll sit by you, you know. If you shut your eyes, perhaps you’ll go to sleep. You’ll be all the better for it, if you do.’

The Marchioness, in saying these words, brought a little table to the bedside, took her seat at it, and began to work away at the concoction of some cooling drink, with the address of a score of chemists. Richard Swiveller, being indeed fatigued, fell into a slumber, and waking in about half an hour, inquired what time it was.

‘Just gone half after six,’ replied his small friend, helping him to sit up again.

‘Marchioness,’ said Richard, passing his hand over his forehead and turning suddenly round, as though the subject but that moment flashed upon him, ‘what has become of Kit?’

He had been sentenced to transportation for a great many years, she said.

‘Has he gone?’ asked Dick — ‘his mother — how is she, — what has become of her?’

His nurse shook her head, and answered that she knew nothing about them.

‘But, if I thought,’ said she, very slowly, ‘that you’d keep quiet, and not put yourself into another level, I could tell you — but I won’t now.’

‘Yes, do,’ said Dick. ‘It will amuse me.’

‘Oh! would it though!’ rejoined the small servant, with a horrified look. ‘I know better than that. Wait till you’re better and then I’ll tell you.’

Dick looked very earnestly at his little friend: and his eyes, being large and hollow from illness, assisted the expression so much, that she was quite frightened, and besought him not to think any more about it. What had already fallen from her, however, had not only piqued his curiosity, but seriously alarmed him, wherefore he urged her to tell him the worst at once.

‘Oh there’s no worst in it,’ said the small servant. ‘It hasn’t anything to do with you.’

‘Has it anything to do with — is it anything you heard through chinks or keyholes, and that you were not intended to hear?’ asked Dick, in a breathless state.

‘Yes,’ replied the small servant. ‘In — in Bevis Marks?’ pursued Dick hastily. ‘Conversations between Brass and Sally?’

‘Yes,’ cried the small servant again.