The master appointed them, and
was not bound to account to anybody for his preferences. One woman
had given him much trouble. She was a stout, lazy brute, who had no
business in the House, and who went in and out just as she liked.
One day something displeased her, and she attacked him with such fury
and suddenness that he would have been a dead man in a few minutes if
she had not been pulled off. But he dared not report her. She knew
too much about him, and she was moved a few days afterwards to look
after the sick. She it was who spoke to Zachariah. She, however,
was not by any means the worst. Worse than her were the old,
degraded, sodden, gin-drinking hags, who had all their lives breathed
pauper air and pauper contamination; women with not one single
vestige of their Maker's hand left upon them, and incapable, even
under the greatest provocation, of any human emotion; who would see a
dying mother call upon Christ, or cry for her husband and children,
and would swear at her and try to smother her into silence. As for
the doctor, he was hired at the lowest possible rate, and was allowed
a certain sum for drugs. It was utterly insufficient to provide
anything except the very commonest physic; and what could he do in
the midst of such a system, even if he had been inclined to do
anything? He accordingly did next to nothing; walked through the
wards, and left his patients pretty much to Providence.
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