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. There are stages of fever, when, as they say, "a nurse is everything;" and a very little laziness, selfishness, or inattention on Nurse[68] Bundle's part would probably have been my death-warrant. But night and day she never relaxed her vigilance for one instant of the crisis of my malady. She took nothing for granted, would trust no one else, but herself saw every order of the doctor carried out, and, at a certain stage, fed me every ten minutes, against my will, coaxing me to obedience, and never losing heart or temper for one instant. And this although my petulance and not infrequent assurances that I wished and preferred to die—"I was so tired"—within the sick room, and my father's despair and bitter groan that he would sacrifice every earthly possession to keep me alive, outside it, would have caused many people to lose their heads. In such an hour many a foolish, gossiping, half-educated woman, by absolute faithfulness to the small details of her trust, by the complete laying aside of personal needs and personal feelings, rises to the sublimity of duty, and, ministering to the wants of another with an unselfish vigilance almost perfect, earns that meed of praise from men, which from time to time persists, in grateful hyperbole, to liken her sex to the angels.
 
My poor father, whose irrepressible distress led to his being forbidden to enter my room, powerless to help, and therefore without alleviation for his anxiety, simply hung upon Nurse Bundle's orders and reports, and relied utterly on her. Fortunately for his own health, she gained sufficient influence to insist, almost as peremptorily as in my case, upon his taking food. Often afterwards did she describe how he and Rubens sat outside the door they were not allowed to enter; and she used to declare that when she came out, Rubens, as well as my father, turned an anxious and expectant[69] countenance towards her, and that both alike seemed to await and to understand her report of my condition.
 
Only once did Nurse Bundle's self-possession threaten to fail her. It was on my repeated and urgent request to "have the clergyman to pray with me."
 
Mrs. Bundle, like most uneducated people, rather regarded the visitation of the sick by the parish clergyman as a sort of extreme unction or last sacrament. And to send for the parson seemed to her tantamount to dismissing the doctor and ringing the passing bell. My father was equally averse from the idea on other grounds. Moreover, our old rector had gone, and the lately-appointed one was a stranger, and rather an eccentric stranger, by all accounts.
 
For my own part, I had a strong interest in the new rector. ............