Mary Davis shook her head, not quite assuringly. "No, but she do moan if I try to move her, or make her take something. It just goes to my heart."
"Well, look here," said Betsy Simmons, after a pause, "I'm just over the way, Mrs. Davis, and I'm ready to help. It isn't that I'm anxious to do much for old Mr. Meads, but Miss Daisy's given me many a smile and kind word since first she came to this place, and I'd do anything I could for her, poor little dear! Maybe she'll be well again in a day or two, and maybe she won't. Seems to me the 'won't' is more likely than the 'will.' But there's no knowing. And you can't be in this room always, and never get out."
"I don't mind for that," Mary Davis answered. "But the day after to-morrow is visiting-day at the hospital, and it would be a fret to me if I couldn't get there for a sight of my husband."
"To be sure you must; and you shall too. That's easy managed," said Mrs. Simmons. "Most part of my business is done before three, and after that my little maid'll keep shop for me while I come here. She's a handy girl, and I can trust her right and left. I've often left her in charge for an hour. I'll do it now, and I'll come and take your place. So you be easy in your mind, and don't you worry. How did it all come about, Mrs. Davis? I've heard a dozen tales, more or less, and I don't see how they can all be true."
Mary Davis in subdued tones described the scene at the school feast, tears coming into her eyes as she spoke of Daisy's brave attempt to save her husband from the effects of his own rashness. "She knew the danger, Mrs. Simmons, though we didn't, and yet she never thought of herself. But that's her all over, and it always was. It seems queer that lightning should take to one thing more than another, but Mr. Bennet says so it is. He says any manner of iron or steel touching us is dangerous in a storm, and he's known a lady's hand hurt from having a needle in her fingers. To be sure there's the lightning conductor on the Church, but I didn't think of that before. Mr. Bennet says my husband was just making a lightning conductor of himself. It's a pity folks can't learn more of such things when they are young. But Miss Daisy was always so quick to take in and remember, even when she was but a mite of a child."
"Yes; you've known Miss Daisy before?" Mrs. Simmons said, in an inquiring tone.
[CHAPTER VII.]
PAST DAYS.
MARY DAVIS was not unwilling to give the information desired.
"Yes," she said. "I was Miss Daisy's nurse, not to say general servant in the house as well, except that I had a girl under me. From the time Miss Daisy was three to the time she was nine, I lived with them. A little darling she was, and so like her mother. I always did say Mrs. Meads was a real lady in her ways,—not the least bit like Mr. Meads in his ways. How in the world she ever married him!—but she told me once it wasn't of her own will. She had a life of it, poor thing—brought up so different as she must have been too! And Miss Daisy takes after her. I'd never have wanted to leave of my own choice, but Mr. Meads was for ever talking of the expense of my keep; and though it's little enough of wages I had from him, I couldn't get along without eating. I bore a deal for the sake of his wife and little Miss Daisy; but he worried and worried and treated me so bad, that at last it seemed as if I couldn't bear myself under the way he went on. Not as I really ever thought of leaving, but I got vexed with things being as they were, and I answered my master again when he scolded, which wasn't right. He was wrong of course, but I put myself in the wrong too. I've been often enough sorry since, for if I had just held my tongue I might have stayed on awhile longer, and been with Mrs. Meads to the last. I don't know how ever she managed after I went."