She shattered the lump of coal quite as she said this.
"That's why I've come to you. He's in one of those heavy sleeps. I've got the letter-box and the key in my room. I want you to open it and look for me. I didn't quite like to do that."
Sophy gulped shame. Its tang was bitterer than wormwood. Then she felt a sudden anger against this cool, white-capped little creature who summoned her suddenly to violate her husband's private property.
"No. I can't do that, Nurse," she said coldly. "Not on an uncertainty."
"But it's quite certain," said Anne Harding patiently. "Wait— I'll prove it to you."
She turned at last and looked at Sophy.
"In order to be quite sure," she said—"you know, ma'am, Dr. Bellamy had told me he felt pretty sure that Mr. Chesney was getting more than the chart showed. Well, to be quite sure, I substituted salt and water for four out of the six doses I've given in twenty-four hours. Now you see, ma'am, to cut a patient down suddenly in the doses like that would make him suffer something awful if he was really not getting more himself."
Sophy sat gazing at her.
"How would it make him suffer?" she said at last. Her voice was almost a whisper.
"Oh, nerves—terrible—we've no way of imagining what they go through when the drug's taken away sudden. I nursed a case once where the doctor had that method. But I'd never do it again, ma'am. The patient twisted the bars at the foot of the bed in his agony like they had been paper. It was a brass bed. No, ma'am. I'd never be party to a thing like that again."