And my uncle spoilt the c****x, and did not die.
I replaced the little clergyman on the chair by the bedside, and he hovered about the room.
“ I think,” he whispered to me mysteriously, as he gave place to me, “I believe—it is well with him.”
I heard him trying to render the stock phrases of Low Church piety into French for the benefit of the stolid man in grey alpaca. Then he knocked a glass off the table, and scrabbled for the fragments. From the first I doubted the theory of an immediate death. I consulted the doctor in urgent whispers. I turned round to get champagne, and nearly fell over the clergyman’s legs. He was on his knees at the additional chair the Basque landlady had got on my arrival, and he was praying aloud, “Oh, Heavenly Father, have mercy on this thy Child....” I hus
