"Oh, poor Pepperpot Wagtail is become alarmingly ill; inflammatory
symptoms have appeared, and"--Here the colloquy was cut short by the
entrance of Mrs Peter Celid--a pretty woman enough. She had come to
learn herself from our landlady, how Mr Wagtail was, and with the
kindliness of the country, she volunteered to visit poor little Waggy in
his sick-bed. I did not go into the room with her; but when she
returned, she startled us all a good deal, by stating her opinion that
the worthy man was really very ill, in which she was corroborated by the
doctor, who now arrived. So soon as the medico saw him, he bled him,
and after prescribing a lot of effervescing draughts, and various
febrifuge mixtures, he left a large blister with the old brown landlady,
to be applied over his stomach if the wavering and flightiness did not
leave him before morning. We returned early after dinner from Mr N----'s
to our lodgings, and as I knew Gelid was expected at his brother's in
the evening, to meet a large assemblage of kindred, and as the night was
rainy and tempestuous, I persuaded him to trust the watch to me; and as
our brown landlady had been up nearly the whole of the previous night, I
sent for Tailtackle to spell me, while the black valets acted with great
assiduity in their capacity of surgeon's mates. About two in the
morning Mr Wagtail became delirious, and it was all that I could do,
aided by my sable assistants, and an old black nurse, to hold him down
in his bed. Now was the time to clap on the blister, but he repeatedly
tore it off, so that at length we had to give it up for an impracticable
job; and Tailtackle, whom I had called from his pallet, where he had
gone to lie down for an hour, placed the caustico, as the Spaniards call
it, at the side of the bed.