“Maimie!” Jack cried again; “are you ill? Mother, look!” he said passionately.
We were all three by her side in a moment. She made a kind of warding-off movement, and muttered, “Don’t move me!”
“You had better lie down on the sofa,” I said. “I think you have been working too hard.”
She shook her head, and then rested it against Cherry.
“Come, my dear,” I said, touching her.
After a moment’s hesitation she stood up slowly; but then there was a gasp, almost a cry, and she dropped back, white as ashes.
“O don’t make me move,—please, please don’t,—it is so cruel.”
“Mother, you must not,” Jack cried, in a trembling voice, as if he too thought me cruel. I could have borne anything but this. I felt my heart grow suddenly hard.
“Of course Maimie can sit here, if she prefers to do so,” I said coldly. “I thought she would be better on the sofa.”
Maimie hid her face on Cherry’s shoulder, and sobbed. I stood waiting, uncertain whether to go back to my work, and deterred by a fear of seeming unkind in Jack’s eyes.