The String of Pearls (1850), p. 162

"Certainly."
In the course of the day the captain made his appearance, and Colonel Jeffery detailed to him all that had taken place, only lamenting that, after so happily getting possession of Tobias, he should be in so sorry a condition. The captain expressed a wish to see him, and they both went to the chamber, where a woman
had been hired to sit with Tobias, in order to give the first intimation of his stirring. Of course, as it was her duty, and what she was specially hired for, to keep wide awake, she was fast asleep, and snoring loud enough to awaken any one much worse than poor Tobias. But that was to be expected.
"Oh," said the captain, "this is a professional nurse."
"A professional devil!" said the colonel. "How did you know that?"
"By her dropping off so comfortably to sleep, and her utter neglect of her charge. I never knew one that did not do so, and, in good truth, I am inclined to think it is the very best thing they can do, for if they are not asleep they are obnoxiously awake."
The colonel took a pin from his cravat, and rather roughly inserted its point into the fat arm of the nurse. She started up, exclaiming—
"Drat the fleas, can't a mortal sleep in peace for them?"
"Madam," said the colonel, "how much is owing to you for sleeping here a few hours?"
"Lord bless me, sir, is this you? The poor soul has never so much as stirred. How my heart bleeds continually for him, to be sure. Ah, dear me, we are all born like sparks, and keep continually flying upward, as the psalm says."
"How much do I owe you"
"Here to-day, and gone to-morrow. Bless his innoeent face.'*
The colonel rung the bell, and a strapping footman made his appearance.
"You will see tins woman to the door, John," he said, "and pay her for being here about three hours."
"Why, you mangey skin-flint," cried the woman. "What do you—"
She was cut short in her vituperative eloquence by John, who handed her down stairs with such dispatch that a pint bottle of gin rolled out of her pocket and was smashed, filling the house with an odour that was quite unmistakaeble.
"What do you propose to do? said the captain.
"Why, as we have dined, if vou have no objection we will sit here and keep this poor benighted one company for awhile. He is better with no one than such as she whom I have dislodged; but before night he shall have a more tender
and less professional nurse. You know more of the world, after all, than I do, captain."

CHAPTER XXII.

TOBIAS HAS A MIND DISEASED

With a bottle of claret upon the table between them, Colonel Jeffery and his old friend sat over the fire in the bed-room devoted to the use of poor Tobias Ragg. Alas! poor boy, kindness and wealth that now surrounded him came late
in the day. Before he first crossed the threshold of Sweeney Todd's odious abode, what human heart could have more acutely felt genuine kindness than Tobias's, but his destiny had been an evil one. Guilt has its victims, and Tobias was in all senses one of the victims of Sweeney Todd.
"I am sufficiently, perhaps superstitious, you will call it," said Colonel Jeffery in a low tone of voice, "to think that my meeting with this boy was not altogether accidental.''
"Indeed ?"
"No. Many things have happened to me during life—although I admit that they may be all accounted for as natural coincidences, curious only at the best