Miss Hearn had been shocked to see that the children looked less neat than formerly, and were more rarely sent to school, and shook her curls quite viciously when she declared that she should turn the woman out after all if she didn’t pay her rent next quarter; and Miss Hearn would have been more bitter than ever if she had heard the whisper that ran round to the effect that poor Lucy had been known to take her drop of comfort at times when she was most low. But the kindlier neighbours kept her secret and tried to screen her. Only they shook their heads too when the scarlet fever appeared in the village, and Tom and ’Lizabeth took it, and the doctor upbraided the mother for carelessness, and perhaps they might have been more down upon her still, but that the boy died, and the mother collapsed entirely, so that there was nothing for it but to help with the other children and nurse the woman—because there was no one else to do it.
Thanks to these good folk and the handy and patient little elder daughter, Lucy was creeping slowly back to life again, but it was helplessly and unwillingly, and the doctor’s old housekeeper was trying to put a little spirit into her this pleasant autumn day.
“Why, it’s a real treat to see ye out again, my dear,” she was saying cheerily. “And ye look nicely; don’t she, Sue?” she called to the little girl who was tidying up busily within.
The child came to the door to shake a duster; her plump, rosy checks were thinner and sallower than of yore, and her round, brown eyes less bright.
“Yes,” she said, speaking cheerfully, but looking across rather doubtfully at the invalid; “mother do look a bit spryer.”
“Why, ye’d be about agin in no time if ye’d but use a little h’effort yerself,” declared the old woman. “Doctor says so, and I’m sure ’e’d ought to know, seein’ as ’e brought ye through them h’awful times ye used to ’ave afore yer ’usbin’ was took.”
Lucy’s white face flushed as with anger.
“I didn’t ’ave no sich h’awful times as I’ve ’ad since!” she whined. “There was summit to get better for then.”
The child bit her lip and went indoors. There was silence for a moment while one could hear her clattering the irons down to the fire ready for the bit of laundry-work she was trying hard to keep pace with against the time mother should be fit to take it up again.
“Ye didn’t ought to talk so, Mrs. Wood,” said the woman. “What, ’aven’t ye got your childer?”