How, at
last, she was minded to confide her own health to Tom, and to instal
him as her private physician; yea, and would have made him feel her
pulse on the spot, had he not luckily found some assafoetida, and
therewith so perfumed the shop, that her "nerves" (of which she was
always talking, though she had nerves only in the sense wherein a
sirloin of beef has them) forced her to beat a retreat.
But she returned again to the charge next day, and rushed bravely
through that fearful smell, cleaver in hand, as the carrier set down
at the door a huge box, carriage-paid, all the way from London, and
directed to Thomas Thurnall, Esquire. She would help to open it: and
so she did, while old Heale and his wife stood by curious,--he with a
maudlin wonder and awe (for he regarded Tom already as an altogether
awful and incomprehensible "party"), and Mrs. Heale with a look of
incredulous scorn, as if she expected the box to be a mere sham,
filled probably with shavings. For (from reasons best known to
herself) she had never looked pleasantly on the arrangement which
entrusted to Tom the care of the bottles. She had given way from
motives of worldly prudence, even of necessity; for Heale had been
for the greater part of the week quite incapable of attending to his
business: but black envy and spite were seething in her foolish heart,
and seethed more and more fiercely when she saw that the box did
not contain shavings, but valuables of every sort and kind--drugs,
instruments, a large microscope (which Tom delivered out of Miss
Heale's fat clumsy fingers only by strong warnings that it would go
off and shoot her), books full of prints of unspeakable monsters; and
finally, a little packet, containing not one five-pound note, but
four, and a letter which Tom, after perusing, put into Mr.
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