Miss Armitage smiled down in the pallid face. It had grown quite thin again, but it 196 seemed to hold an ethical sweetness. Marilla put out one slim hand.
“It seems too bad the old lady should be taken ill at this juncture,” said Mrs. Seymour. “And Manila’s been such a faithful child. She’s been growing tall this summer and autumn and I suppose has run ahead of her strength. Then with the two children to look after—well a little nurse girl has rather hard lines—they seldom have more than one, or if they do the others are older. My two boys are in boarding school. I’ve wished one was a girl, they are so much more company for the mother. But I’d wanted her to be pretty,” she cast a sidelong glance at the twins. “It’s a pity Jack should have taken all the beauty.”
The twins felt so comfortable over the candy that they went to playing with their blocks. Miss Armitage gave her patient the second dose of her medicine and she closed her eyes.
There was almost a shriek as Bridget opened the hall door with—“the merciful saints preserve us! Has Jack been run over by one of them fury things?”
Jack was crying and the blood was streaming from his nose all over his blouse. 197
“He’s been fighting, the bad boy, with a nasty, dirty tramp!”
Bridget in her inmost heart hoped he had the worst of it. “Whist!” she exclaimed, “there’s two sick folks in the house, the doctor’s been an’ he’s coming again!”
“Sick! Oh, what has happened?”
“Well, the old lady’s had a stroke, an’ Marilla had a bad faint again. I thought sure she was dead.”
Mrs. Borden dropped into the hall chair and began to cry hysterically.