But I will take especial care, that as soldiers you
shall have every thing, to a penny or a pin's head,
that you are justly entitled to.'' He went to work
without fear or favour, reported many abuses to
the Board of Directors, had several officers, commissaries,
&c. removed from the service, and made
his name as great a terror to the peculators at
home, as it had been to the enemies of Britain in
Hindostan.
Captain Seelencooper, and his associates in the
hospital department, heard and trembled, fearing
that their turn should come next; but the General,
who elsewhere examined all with his own eyes,
showed a reluctance to visit the hospital in person.
Public report industriously imputed this to fear of
infection. Such was certainly the motive; though
it was not fear for his own safety that influenced
General Witherington, but he dreaded lest he
should carry the infection home to the nursery,
on which he doated. The alarm of his lady was
yet more unreasonably sensitive; she would scarcely
suffer the children to walk abroad, if the wind
but blew from the quartet where the Hospital was
situated.
But Providence baffles the precautions of mortals.
In a walk across the fields, chosen as the
most sheltered and sequestered, the children, with
their train of Eastern and European attendants,
met a woman who carried a child that was recovering
from the smallpox.
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