Kitabı oku: «The New Mistress: A Tale», sayfa 19
“Yes, Bill dear, I know – I know,” sobbed little Miss Burge.
“And while I’ve been asking her, it came over me like that I was wrong to ask her, and that it wouldn’t be natural and right.”
“Oh, Bill dear!”
“She’s been so good and tender, and kind and sensible, that it’s been like taking the scales from before my eyes, and been a sort of lesson to me; and somehow, my dear, I feel as if I was a different sort of man to what I was before. I’m not a speaker, and I can’t express myself as I should like to; but what I want to say is, that I feel as if I was more of a man and a bit wiser than I was.”
“Oh, Bill dear!”
“I’m getting on fast for fifty, Betsey dear, and Miss Thorne here – I should like to say Hazel Thorne here – is only two-and-twenty or thereabouts, and she’s going to be like our own child from now, if she will, and we’re going to try and keep away troubles for the future till she wants to go away. And now we won’t say any more about it, but let things settle down. Stop a minute, though, Hazel Thorne, my dear; you’ve made me a gentleman, and we shall be friends.”
For answer Hazel left Miss Burge, who had been sitting by her with her arm round her waist, and, placing her hand in his, she looked him full in the eyes, seeing no longer the homeliness of the man, hearing no more his illiterate speech, but gazing as it were straight into his simple honest kindly heart. She hesitated for a moment, and then, reaching up she kissed, him as a child would kiss one she loved.
Chapter Forty.
“I Want Teacher.”
One low, weary, incessant cry in the shabby, sloping-roofed, whitewashed room.
The place was scrupulously clean; there was not so much as a speck upon the windows; but the chamber was miserably bare. One well-worn, damaged rush-chair was beside the worm-eaten, stump bedstead, a box supported a chipped white jug and basin, and an old sack unsewn and opened out formed the carpet. The only other article of furniture was a thin, very old, white scrap of dimity curtain half drawn across the lead lattice-paned window upon a piece of tape.
And from the bed arose that one weary, constant cry from between the fevered, cracked lips, night and day —
“I want teacher to come!”
For there was no mischief dancing in her unnaturally bright eyes; the restless hands were not raised to play some trick; the face was not drawn up in some mocking grimace: all was pitiful, and pinched, and sad; for poor Feelier Potts lay sick unto death, and it seemed as if at any moment the dark shadow would float forth from the open window, bearing one more sleeping spirit away.
“I want teacher! – I want teacher!” – night and day that weary, weary burden, ever in the same unreasoning strain; and it was in vain that the poor rough mother, softened now in face of this terrible trouble, sought to give comfort.
“But she can’t come now, my bairn – she can’t come. Oh, do be quiet – do!”
“I want teacher – I want teacher to come.”
Unreasoning ever – for poor Feelier was almost beyond reasoning – there was one great want in her shadowed mind, and it found vent between her lips for the first days loudly, then painfully low, and at last in a hoarse murmur, but always the same —
“I want teacher to come.”
“I won’t come anigh you to speak, miss, for it wouldn’t be right,” sobbed poor, broken-down Mrs Potts, weak now and worn out, as she stood at the cottage gate, after making signs for Hazel to come to the door. For nights past she had been watching by her child’s couch, while her husband had kept watch at the public-house till it was shut, and then he had slept in a barn. For he had only one body, and he was terribly afraid lest it should be stricken by the sore disease.
“I am not afraid of the infection, Mrs Potts,” said Hazel kindly. “You look worn out; let me give you a cup of tea.”
“My dear Hazel,” said Mrs Thorne from the kitchen, where she was seated at the evening meal, “what are you going to do?”
“Good, if I can, mother,” said Hazel simply, and she filled a cup and took it out to the half-fainting woman, who looked her thanks, for she could not speak for some minutes.
“There, miss, and God bless you for it,” she said, handing back the cup. “I felt I must come and tell you, miss, for – for it seems as if she couldn’t die till you had been.”
“Does she ask for me so?” said Hazel.
“She asks for nothing else, miss. It’s always ‘I want teacher,’ and – and I thought miss – if you’d come to the house – if it was only to stand on the other side of the road – the window’s open, miss, and she could hear you, and if you was just to say, ‘I’m here, Feelier!’ or, ‘go to sleep, there’s a good girl!’ it would quiet her like, and then she’d be able to die.”
“Oh, pray don’t speak like that!” cried Hazel. “Let us hope that she will live.”
“I don’t know what for, miss,” said the wretched woman despondently. “Only to live to have a master who’d beat and ill-use her, and make her slave to keep his bairns. I did think I’d like her to live, but the Lord knows best and He’s going to take her away.”
“I’ll come on and see her,” said Hazel quietly. “Poor child! I was in hopes that she was going to amend. Wait for me here till I get my hat, and I will come.”
“What are you going to do, my dear?” exclaimed Mrs Thorne as Hazel passed through the room.
“I am going to see one of my children, mother,” she replied quietly.
“Not that dreadful Feelier Potts, Hazel?”
“Hush, dear! The child is dangerously ill, and her mother can hear your words.”
“But it would be madness to go. It is an infectious disease.”
“I feel, dear, as if it is my duty to go,” replied Hazel, with a curious, far-off look in her eyes; and without another word she followed to the little low cottage by the side of the road.
“There, miss, if you’d stand there I think you could hear her. You see the window’s open. I’ll go upstairs and stir her up like, and then you speak, and – ”
“I want teacher! When will she come?”
The words came in a low, harsh tone plainly to Hazel’s ears, and with a sigh she walked straight up to the door. “But you hadn’t better go anigh her. The doctor said – ”
“It will not hurt me,” said Hazel quietly.
“Well, miss, if you wouldn’t mind, it would do her a power of good, I’m sure. This way, miss,” and she led her visitor through the room where she had been washing, to the awkward, well-worn staircase, and up this to poor Feelier’s blank-looking room.
“I want teacher! – I want teacher!” came the weary burden as Hazel walked up to the bedside, shocked at the way in which the poor girl had changed.
“I want teacher! When will she come?” came again from the cracked lips as Hazel sank upon her knees by the bedside.
“I am here, my child,” she said softly, as the burning head was tossed wearily from side to side.
The effect was electrical. The thin arms that had been lying upon the coverlet were raised, and with one ejaculation they were flung round the visitor’s neck, the poor child nestling to her with a cry of joy.
“My poor child!” cried Hazel tenderly. And the weary iteration was heard no more.
“She never made that ado over me,” said the mother discontentedly; but no one seemed to heed her, and she stole downstairs to her work, but came up from time to time to find poor Feelier sleeping softly in Hazel’s arms, her head upon her breast. And when Mrs Potts attempted to unloose the clinging hands that were about “teacher’s neck,” the girl uttered a passionate, impatient cry, and clung the tighter to one who seemed to have come to bring her hope of life.
“It was very imprudent of you to come, Miss Thorne,” said the doctor. “I heard you were here from Mr William Forth Burge. He is waiting below. Suppose you try to lay her down; she seems to be asleep.”
Asleep or awake, poor Feelier would not be separated from her friend, and the doctor unwillingly owned at last that it would be undoing a great deal of good to force her away.
“You have given her a calm sense of rest, for which in her delirium she has been so long striving. I must confess that you have done her more good than I.”
“She will go to sleep soon, perhaps,” said Hazel, “and then leave me of her own accord.”
“And then?” said the doctor.
“I can return home, and come again when she asks for me.”
“I’m afraid, Miss Thorne, that you have not thought of the probable consequences of returning home,” said the doctor. “You have young sisters there, and your mother. My dear young lady, it would be exceedingly imprudent to go.”
For the first time the consequences of her step occurred to Hazel, and she looked aghast at the speaker.
“Then there is the school, Miss Thorne. I think, as a medical man, it is my duty to forbid your going there again for some time to come. Yes, I see you look at me, but I am only a hardened medical man. I go everywhere, and somehow one escapes a great portion of the ills one goes to cure.”
There was no help for it, and after coming as an act of kindness to see the poor girl who had cried for her so incessantly, Hazel found herself literally a prisoner, and duly installed in the bedroom as her sick scholar’s nurse.
Chapter Forty One.
Brother and Sisters – Refined
There was a good deal of conversation about it at the Vicarage, where it became known through a visit paid by Rebecca and Beatrice to the school, and their coming back scandalised at finding it in charge only of the pupil-teachers, who explained the reason of Hazel’s absence, and that she had sent a message to Mr Chute, asking him if he would raise one of the shutters, and give an eye occasionally to the girls’ school, which was, however, in so high a state of discipline now that the pupil-teachers were able to carry it on passably well.
“And of course Mr Chute has done so?” said Miss Lambent.
“No, please ’m; he said he had plenty to do with his own school,” replied one pupil-teacher.
“And he wouldn’t do anything of the sort,” said the other.
“What a disgraceful state of affairs, Beatrice!” exclaimed Miss Lambent; and the sisters hurried away to acquaint their brother with the last piece of news.
“I suppose, with a person of her class, one can only expect the same conduct that one would receive from a servant,” said Beatrice acidly.
“I do not understand you, Beatrice,” said her brother.
“I mean, Henry, that now she has resigned or received her dismissal, we shall only get the same amount of inattention that one would from a discharged servant.”
“For my part,” said the vicar, “I think that Miss Thorne is being hardly dealt with.”
“Absurd, Henry!” said Miss Lambent. “We cannot say a word to you but you take Miss Thorne’s part.”
“Why not, when I see her treated with injustice!”
“Injustice, Henry!” cried Beatrice. “Is it injustice to speak against a young person who behaves like an unjust steward?”
The vicar was silent.
“For my part,” said Rebecca, “I think she should have been dismissed at once; and she would have been, but for the opposition offered by you, Henry, and Mr Burge.”
“For my part,” continued the vicar, ignoring the past speeches, “I can see nothing more touching, more beautiful, and Christian-like than Miss Thorne’s behaviour to this child – one of the sick lambs of her fold.”
“We are sorry, of course, for Ophelia Potts,” said Rebecca; “but she is a dreadful child.”
“A fact, I grant,” said the vicar; “and one that makes Miss Thorne’s conduct shine out the more.”
“Henry!” exclaimed his sisters in a breath.
“We are not doing wrong in staying here, Rebecca,” said Beatrice haughtily. “I do not believe in witchcraft or such follies, but it is as though this woman had bewitched our brother, and as if he were shaping himself in accordance with her plans.”
“I do not understand you, Beatrice,” said the vicar sternly.
“I will be plainer, then, Henry. It seems to me that you are offering yourself a willing victim to the wiles of an artful woman; and the next thing will be, I suppose, that you intend bringing her here as mistress of the Vicarage.”
“I quite agree with Beatrice,” cried Rebecca. “It is time we left you, Henry, to the devices and desires of your own heart.”
The vicar was stern of aspect now, as he paced the library, and hot words of anger were upon his lips, but he stayed them there, and looked from face to face as if seeking sympathy where there was none.
He knew that his sisters were right, and that in following out the dictates of his own heart he would gladly ask Hazel Thorne to be his wife; but he was weak, and the more so that she had given him no hope. His was not the nature that would have made him a martyr to his faith; neither could he be one for his unrequited love. He loved Hazel Thorne; but she did not care for him – he could see it plainly enough; and even had she loved him in return, he was not one who could have braved public opinion for her sake. For the trouble connected with that money was always in his mind. Then there was the society to which he belonged. What would they say if he, the Reverend Henry Lambent, Master of Arts, and on visiting terms with the highest county families, were to enter into a matrimonial alliance with the daughter of a bankrupt stockbroker – one who was only the new mistress!
Then there were his sisters. If he married Hazel, always supposing she would accept him, he should have to break with them; and this he was too weak to do. In imagination he had been the stern ruler of Plumton All Saints’ Vicarage for many years, and head of the parish. But it was a mistake: the real captain had been Beatrice, his younger sister; and Rebecca, though the elder, had been first lieutenant. The vicar had only been a private in the ranks.
“Now we are upon this theme,” Beatrice went on, “it would be better, Henry, that the unpleasant feeling that has existed should come to an end.”
“Surely there has been no unpleasant feeling between us,” said the vicar.
“I quite agree with Beatrice – unpleasant feeling,” said Rebecca.
“We are sisters and brother,” continued Beatrice, “and we must remain so.”
“Most assuredly,” said the vicar, smiling.
“I am speaking for Rebecca as well as for myself, then, Henry, when I tell you that we have concluded that the only way in which our old happy relations can be continued will be by separating.”
“Parting?” said the vicar, in dismay.
“Yes, Henry; by parting. Rebecca and I have a sufficiency, by clubbing together our slender resources, to enable us to live a life of content. A life of usefulness, we fear, will no longer be within our reach, for we shall have to leave our poor behind. But that we must be resigned to lose, for it is time, Henry, that we left you free and were – ”
“No longer a tax upon you and an obstacle in the path of your inclinations,” said Rebecca.
“But surely – you do not mean – you would not leave the Vicarage?”
“We have carefully weighed the matter over, Henry,” said Rebecca, “and I do not see how, under the circumstances, you could wish us to do otherwise.”
“No, no, it is impossible!” cried the vicar, who seemed deeply moved. “Beatrice – Rebecca, of what are you thinking?”
“Of our duty and your happiness,” said Beatrice firmly.
“At the expense of your own,” exclaimed the vicar.
“We must do our duty,” said Rebecca with a sigh, and the sisters rose and left the room, like clever diplomatists, content with the impression they had made, and feeling that by a bold stroke they had completely riveted their old mastery.
Chapter Forty Two.
Bad News
The news of Hazel Thorne’s imprisonment, for it could be called little else, was not long in reaching Ardley, and Mrs Canninge watched her son’s countenance to see what effect it had. There had been an increasing coolness between mother and son, and it seemed as if it were rapidly approaching estrangement. Their old affectionate intercourse had given place to a chilling politeness, and though, time after time, in the bitter annoyance she felt, Mrs Canninge had felt disposed to ask her son how soon it would be necessary for her to vacate her position of mistress of the old hall, she had never been guilty of the meanness, but waited her time.
“He shall never marry her,” she said over and over again; and in spite of her better self, the news of the money trouble had been like balm to her wounded spirit. Now, then, the tidings of Hazel’s visit to the sick child had come, and again, in spite of herself, she felt a sensation akin to satisfaction, for this seemed as if it might act as a safeguard to her son.
It was a flimsy one, she knew – a broken reed upon which to lean; but it was something, and every trifle that appeared likely to keep George Canninge and Hazel apart, if it were only for a few days longer, was like a reprieve, and might result in something better to her mind.
The matter was not discussed, but Mrs Canninge noted that her son rode over to the town every morning, and found afterwards that he called at the Burges’ day after day, where he incidentally learned that Hazel was still nursing the fever-stricken child.
It was pleasant to him at this juncture to talk to little Miss Burge, and to listen to her simple prattle about Hazel, and what trouble she and her brother took in sending down everything that was necessary for the invalid and her nurse, so that Hazel might be comfortable.
“It is very kind of you and Mr Burge,” said Canninge one day.
“Oh, I don’t know, Mr Canninge,” she replied; “we want to do all the good we can, and one can’t help loving Miss Thorne.”
“No,” said George Canninge quietly; and as he rode home he repeated little Miss Burge’s words to himself over and over again – “One can’t help loving Miss Thorne.”
But he made no further advances – he did not go to the schoolhouse to make inquiries, nor yet ask at the cottage where Hazel was a prisoner; he contented himself with visiting the Burges day by day, to start back almost in alarm one morning as he saw a look of trouble in little Miss Burge’s face, and before he could ask what was wrong the little woman burst out with —
“Oh, Mr Canninge, that poor, dear girl!”
“What?” he said excitedly. “She has not – ”
“Yes, sir, and badly. My brother has been down there this morning, and she is delirious. And oh, poor girl! poor girl! I cannot let her lie there alone. I’m dreadfully afraid of the fever, Mr Canninge; but I shall have to go.”
“You? What! to nurse her?” said George Canninge, with a face now ghastly.
“Yes, sir; I must go. My brother has been down every day, and I’ve never been once!” she cried, bursting into a fit of sobbing. “It’s dreadful cowardly, I know; but I could not help it then.”
“And she may die!” said George Canninge as he rode slowly home; “and I have never told her I loved her. Dare I go to see her now?”
He asked himself that question many times, and again many times on the succeeding days; but he did not go near the place where Hazel Thorne lay now, in the shabby room, upon the bed roughly made up for her by Mrs Potts; while Feelier, the very shadow of herself, lay watching “teacher,” and the tears stole down her wasted cheeks as she listened to Hazel Thorne’s excited talking, for the most part incoherent; but here and there a word came to Feelier’s ears, and she wept again, because she was too weak to get up and wait upon “teacher,” whose attack was rapidly assuming a serious form.
By special arrangement with the doctor, the news as to Hazel’s state was sent to the Burges’ after every visit. Not that this was held to suffice, for little Miss Burge was constantly calling at the doctor’s house, and asking for fresh information when there was none to give.
“I can’t bear this no longer, Bill dear,” said Miss Burge one morning. “There’s that poor girl lying there in that wretched place, and no one but strangers to tend her; and it seems as if all her friends had left her now she is in distress.”
“Not all,” said Burge, raising his drooping head. “I’m down there every day; only I can’t be admitted to her room, poor dear! I wish I might be.”
“And I’ve been holding back,” sobbed little Miss Burge, “because I felt afraid of catching the complaint, and the doctor said it would be madness for me to go; but I’m going down this morning, Bill dear, and if I die for it I won’t mind – at least not very much – for I’m sure I shouldn’t be any good to live if I couldn’t help at a time like this. Hasn’t her poor ma been to her yet?”
“No; she isn’t fit to go,” said Burge. “She is ill, and weak, and foolish, and the doctor told her that if she went she would only take the disease home to the little girls. She would only have worried her poor child and been in the way.”
“I’m glad I’ve never been a mother, Bill, to turn out no more use than that in trouble,” sobbed the little woman. “Now, do drink your tea, dear; it will do you good.”
“Nothing won’t do me no good, Betsey,” said the poor fellow dejectedly.
“But it looks so bad, dear, to see you like this. I declare you haven’t washed and shaved this mornings and your hair ain’t been brushed.”
“No,” he said drearily; “I forgot Betsey – I forgot.”
“Why, Bill!” she exclaimed, looking at him scrutinisingly.
“Yes, dear.”
“Why, you haven’t been to bed all night!”
“No, dear.”
“Why, if you haven’t been watching down there by that cottage!” she cried.
“Yes, dear,” he said quietly. “It seemed to do me good like.”
“Oh, Bill!”
“And then I went to the post-office, and I’ve telegraphed for Sir Henry Venner to come down by special train.”
“You have, Bill dear! Why, that’s the Queen’s doctor, ain’t it.”
“Yes, dear.”
“But won’t it cost a heap of money?”
“I’d give every penny I’ve got and sell myself too,” he said, with a ring of simple pathos in his voice, “if it would bring that poor darling back to herself.”
He laid his arms upon the table, and his forehead went down upon them, as he said softly, as if to himself —
“I don’t want any return – I’m not selfish – and I’d ask nothing back. I could go on loving her always, and be glad to see her happy, only please God to let her live – please God let her live!”
Little Miss Burge, with the tears streaming down her honest round face, rose from her seat at the breakfast-table, and went down upon her knees beside her brother, to lay her cheek against one of his hands.
“I’m going down to her now, Bill dear,” she said softly; “and I’ll watch by her night and day; for I think I love her, poor dear! as much as you.”
“God bless you, Betsey dear!” he said, drawing her to his breast, and speaking now with energy. “I couldn’t ask you to go, for it seemed like sending you where I daren’t go myself; but if you could go, dear, I should be a happier man!”
“And go I will, Bill; and I will do my best.”
“And look here, dear!” he cried, quite excitedly now, “you don’t know how you’re helping me, for now I can do what I want.”
“What’s that, dear?”
“Why, I thought, dear, if the big doctor would give leave, we might bring the poor girl on here; but I daren’t even think of it before, on account of you. You, see, dear, I could send away the servants, and get a nurse to come.”
“Oh yes; do, Bill dear!” cried the little body eagerly. “We’d put her in the west room, which would be so bright and cheerful, and – There, I’m standing talking when I ought to go.”
In fact, within five minutes little Miss Burge was ready, with her luggage on her arm; the said luggage consisting of a clean night-dress, “ditto” cap, a cake of soap, and a brush and comb; with which easily portable impedimenta she was soon after settled in Mrs Potts’s dreary low-roofed room.
“No, miss,” whispered the rough woman, “never slep’ a wink all night; but kep’ on talk, talk, talk, talking about her mother and father, and Squire Canninge, and the school pence, and that she was in disgrace.”
“And teacher kep’ saying Mr William Forth Burge was her dearest friend,” put in Feelier, in a shrill, weak voice.
“Hush!” whispered little Miss Burge, for their voices had disturbed Hazel, who, till then, had been lying in a kind of stupor.
She opened her eyes widely, and stared straight before her.
“Are you there, Mr Burge? – are you there?” she said in a quick, excited whisper.
“No, my dear; it’s me, Betsey Burge. I’ve come to stop with you.”
“I didn’t know how good and kind you were then – when I spoke as I did. I was very blind then – I was very blind then,” sighed Hazel wearily.
“And you’ll soon be better now,” said little Miss Burge in a soft, cheery way. “There – let me turn your pillow; it’s all so hot, and – Mrs Potts, send up for two pillows out of our best room directly.”
“Yes, mum; I’ll go myself;” and Mrs Potts hurried away.
“There, my dear, you’ll be nicer and cooler now, and – Oh, dear me, what a lot of things I do want! Mrs Potts, call at the druggist’s for some eau-de-cologne – a big bottle mind.”
“Yes, mum,” came from below.
“Her poor head’s like fire. There, dear – there, my poor dear, let me lay your hair away from you; it will cool your head.”
“Please, Miss Burge, don’t let them cut off all teacher’s hair,” whispered Feelier from the other bed.
“No, my dear; not if I can help it.”
“I want to tell you I was so ungrateful when you spoke to me as you did, Mr Burge,” said Hazel in her low excited whisper.
“No, no, my darling, not ungrateful,” said little Miss Burge, in the soothing voice any one would adopt to a child. – “Poor dear, she don’t know what she’s saying.”
“I have lain here and thought of what you have done,” continued Hazel, “and how self-denying you have always been to me; and I was ungrateful for it all. I know now I was ungrateful.”
“She is wandering, poor girl!” said little Miss Burge, with a sob, as she busied herself in making the room more comfortable, after she had smoothed Hazel’s pillow and opened the window wide to give her more air. After this she turned her attention to poor Feelier, rearranging her pillow, and ending by bathing her face and hands, the poor girl uttering a sigh of relief and pleasure, sinking back afterwards upon her cool pillow, too weak almost to raise her arm.
“There, now you feel more comfortable, don’t you, my dear?” whispered the busy little woman.
“Oh, yes, and – and – and – please – please I’ll never do so no more.”
Poor Feelier burst into a passionate fit of tearful remorse, sobbing wildly in spite of little Miss Burge’s efforts to calm her.
“Oh! hush, hush, my dear; pray be still.”
“I – I – I used to make faces at you in school,” sobbed Feelier.
“Yes, yes, yes; but hush my dear. You only did it in fun.”
“N-no, I didn’t,” sobbed Feelier; “I did it to make – make the other girls laugh.”
“But hush, pray hush, or you’ll hurt poor Miss Thorne.”
Feelier’s sobs ended in one large gulp, as if by magic, and she lay perfectly still, staring at the other bed.
“Please, Miss Burge,” she whispered, “will you bring some of your roses and put in water by teacher’s pillow?”
“Yes, my dear, that I will,” said the little lady, patting Feelier’s hand. “And now lie still, and don’t talk; let’s keep the room quiet, and try to make her better.”
“Yes, Miss Burge; but please will teacher get well?”
“Why, surely, my dear; and very soon.”
“Because mother said I was a little wretch and gave teacher the fever, and I wish I may die instead.”
“But you shall both get well, my dear, very soon; and then you shall both go down to the sea, and you shall be Miss Thorne’s little maid.”
“Shall I?” cried the girl, with her eyes sparkling and a flush coming into her thin, sunken cheeks.
“Yes, that you shall, my dear; only lie very still, and don’t talk.”
“Please, Miss Burge,” whispered Feelier, “let me tell you this.”
“Well, only this one thing, and then you must be very quiet, my dear.”
“Yes, I will,” whispered Feelier, in a quiet, old-fashioned way; “but that’s how teacher keeps on all night and all day; she keeps on wanting Mr William Forth Burge to come to her, and mother says I kep’ on just the same, asking for teacher to come, and I was quiet when she did, and then” – sob – “she caught the fever too.”
“Yes, yes, my dear; but you’ll soon do better now.”
“But you’d better let old Billy Burge – ”
Feelier stopped short, conscious of the slip of her guilty tongue, and looked up at her gentle attendant as if she expected a blow.
“I won’t call him that name agen,” she said demurely, “but if he come he’d do teacher good; only if he did come, he’d ketch the fever too, and I don’t know what’s best, only we mustn’t let teacher die.”
“No, no, my dear; of course not,” whispered little Miss Burge hastily.
“But if she did die I know what I should do,” said Feelier dreamily, and with a drowsy look in her eyes, the effect of being washed and the cooler atmosphere of the room inducing sleep.
“What should you do, my dear?” said Miss Burge, pressing down the pillow to let the cool air blow upon her cheek.
“I should set violets and primroses all over her grave; and if any of the other girls was to pick any of ’em, oh, I would give ’em such a banging! And then – then – then – ”
And then poor, weak Ophelia Potts sank into a profound sleep, and little Miss Burge wiped her eyes and sat and watched Hazel’s weary, restless head; listening to her broken sentences and the incoherent mutterings, all of which were to the same tune – that she had been weak and cruel and ungrateful to one who had been all devotion to her, and that she would never rest till she had tried to make him some amends.
“Poor Bill, if he could only hear her now, how glad he’d be!” sighed the watcher; “but this will all pass away, and when she gets well she’ll never know she said a word. Poor Bill; it won’t never – it couldn’t ever be!”
“I want Mr Burge,” cried Hazel suddenly, and her voice sounded hard and strange. “Tell him to come to me – tell him to come.”
“Yes, yes, yes, my darling; he shall come soon.”
“He would catch the fever, do you say? No no; I could not give it to him; he is so kind and good. Tell Mr Geringer, mother, it is impossible; I could not be his wife.”
“Oh, my poor dear!” whispered Miss Burge, bathing Hazel’s burning forehead with the eau-de-cologne that Mrs Potts had now brought; “that poor, poor, burning, wandering brain. Why don’t the doctor come?”
