"It was not a matter for you to decide," I broke in, with natural asperity. "I am neither a baby nor an idiot. I have at least as much sense as any one in this house—I should be sorry for myself, indeed, if I had not—and I prefer to attend to my own business, if it's all the same to you. Whether I should be here, or whether I should not, was for me to say—for me and for my daughter. She, I am very certain, had no part in shutting me out; and she ought to have been considered, if I was not."
"It was she," said Mrs. Juke, "who wished it most. Her one desire was to spare you."
"I don't believe it."
"I am sorry if you don't believe it." The old thing shook like blancmange in hot weather. "I can only say that it is perfectly true."
"I will ask her if it is true—that she wished to have strangers with her in place of her own mother."
I started to cross the landing to Phyllis's room, and my teeth were set, and my heart was thumping with an emotion that I could scarcely control—but I need not say I did control it. Mrs. Juke hung on to me to stop me, pleading that Phyllis and the baby were fast asleep together, and must not be disturbed; and I asked her how she, who had been a mother fifteen times, could insult a mother by supposing that she would be less careful of a sick child than anybody else. If I had gone in alone I am sure she would not have heard me—Tom says that I walk about the house as if shod with feathers—but Mrs. Juke would come too, and there was no hushing that solid tread. I saw my darling start up from the pillow, frightened out of her sleep by the noise, and the flush come into her cheeks. And Mrs. Juke cried "There!" reproachfully, as if it had been my fault.
At the same moment another stranger came out of Edmund's dressing-room, and turned upon me like a perfect fury.
"I must ask you, madam, to be so good as to be quiet," she said. "The doctor's orders are——"
But I did not wait to be told by her what the doctor's orders were; I simply took her by the shoulders, ran her back into the dressing-room, and locked the door upon her. If Edmund's mother liked to be rude to me, she could, but I was not going to take impudence from a hospital nurse. I cannot understand the passion young doctors have for those conceited, overbearing women. This creature was not even married. What, I wonder, would my mother have thought of a single woman attending a lady in her confinement? I call it scandalous.
When I had got rid of her, I requested Mrs. Juke to retire also, which she did. I apologised to her if I had said anything that seemed discourteous in the heat of the moment, for there was a watery look about her eyes as if she were feeling rather hurt; and I said to her in a gentle way, that, if she would only for one instant imagine herself in my place, she could not help admitting that I was more than justified. I suggested that it would be a kindness to us if she would see what the servants were about, judging from appearances, they were entirely neglecting their duties. I mentioned the state of the lunch-table, and Phyllis broke in to explain that Ted had begun work so late that he had not yet found time to come up for anything to eat.