Wuthering Heights

“Nearly ready to run about, Nell!” he replied, putting on a cheerful
smile.

“And the mistress?” I ventured to inquire; “the doctor says she’s—”

“Damn the doctor!” he interrupted, reddening. “Frances is quite right:
she’ll be perfectly well by this time next week. Are you going
upstairs? will you tell her that I’ll come, if she’ll promise not to
talk. I left her because she would not hold her tongue; and she
must—tell her Mr. Kenneth says she must be quiet.”

I delivered this message to Mrs. Earnshaw; she seemed in flighty
spirits, and replied merrily, “I hardly spoke a word, Ellen, and there
he has gone out twice, crying. Well, say I promise I won’t speak: but
that does not bind me not to laugh at him!”

Poor soul! Till within a week of her death that gay heart never failed
her; and her husband persisted doggedly, nay, furiously, in affirming
her health improved every day. When Kenneth warned him that his
medicines were useless at that stage of the malady, and he needn’t put
him to further expense by attending her, he retorted, “I know you need
not—she’s well—she does not want any more attendance from you! She
never was in a consumption. It was a fever; and it is gone: her pulse