Creeping upstairs, with my noiseless, sick-room step, I met old Mother Juke, as Tom calls her, lumping down, with the gait of a rheumatic elephant. She seemed to shake the very street. How my poor child could stand such a woman about her, at such a time, I could not imagine; it would have driven me into a fever. Of course she is kind and well-meaning enough—she can't help her age and her physical infirmities—I know that. And it is quite true that she has been a great nurse in her day. But her day is past.
"Good-morning, Mrs. Juke," I said pleasantly, as we met and paused on a little landing at the turn of the stairs, "you are here early."
Scarcely had I opened my mouth when the mountain fell on me, as it were; the old thing put her huge arms about my neck and kissed me. I have always objected to being slobbered over by comparative strangers, and I did not return the kiss; nevertheless I treated her with the courtesy that I felt due to my son-in-law's mother.
"And so," I said, smiling, "you have all been conspiring together to steal a march on me! You have been jumping my claim, as the miners say—defrauding a poor woman of her natural rights."
"Nothing of the sort, my dear," she replied, in her fat voice—and if there is one thing that I dislike more than another is to be "my-deared" in this promiscuous fashion. "You were best out of it, with your feeling heart. It would only have upset you, my dear, and that would have upset her; and then Ted would have been in a way, and Captain Braye would have blamed us. I am sure he is grateful, if nobody else is."
"He is nothing of the sort," I cried, flaming. "My husband is perfectly astounded at the way I have been shut out. He never heard of such a thing as a mother being set aside at such a time."
She was at a loss for an answer to this, so fell back upon praises of the baby and of Phyllis's satisfactory condition. There was nothing, she said, that could give me the faintest cause for uneasiness, nor had been from the first—nor would be, provided she were kept quiet and free from all excitement. And we ought to be humbly thankful that this was so—to feel nothing but joy that she had done so excellently, and that the child was so strong and beautiful.
"That is all very well," I remarked. "But that is not the point. What I want to know is—and I intend to have an answer—whose doing it was that I was not sent for yesterday morning?—that I was kept in utter ignorance of the most important event that has ever occurred in my family—when, for all you people did to prevent it, my daughter might have died without my seeing her again!"
We were now in the little first-floor sitting-room, just off the stairs. It was between three and four, and the luncheon things were not cleared away. Indeed the house seemed completely disorganised, having no one to look after it. Old Mrs. Juke, who did not seem to notice this, stood just within the door, puffing like a porpoise, and trying to look dignified, which was quite impossible.
"I am very sorry you take it in this way," she said, in a hoity-toity tone. "We may have made a mistake, but, if we did, we made it with the best intentions. All we thought of was to save you useless pain. We knew your nervous, anxious temperament, and how keenly you feel anything affecting your children; and so we decided——"