"Now, Jean dear, here is some hot soup, which I want you to take."
Jean sat up and took it, asking no questions.
"I won't talk to you yet, Barbara. You are here, and I am so thankful. I will lie still and get well. Your soup seems to have given me strength already."
She dropped asleep, and Barbara began to make herself, as well as Jean, thoroughly comfortable. She was one of those women who understand that art to perfection, and in an hour's time, Jean's room looked a different place. Then she brought in a chair-bedstead from the adjoining room, and after having some supper, went to bed. Jean was rather restless, but she told Barbara the next morning that she had not slept so well for weeks.
Barbara kept her well supplied with nourishment, and in the afternoon, she felt so much better that she was able to sit in a chair by the window and talk.
"I can't thank you, Barbara. It is just like you to come off to London to nurse a girl who happened to stay with you once for a few weeks. Who but you would have done it? But you were sent at the right time, just when I wanted you most. I need not have feared."
"You ought to have let us know, Jean."
"I couldn't! You don't know all. I'm desperately poor; I am not going to worry, but I'm terribly afraid my painting will come to a standstill, and then, how shall I live? It is such a bitter disappointment to me about my picture. I could have finished it, and I think I was doing good work."
"Mr. Oxton was in a dreadful state about you. Jean, dear, may I ask you if there is anything—"
"Anything between us? Nothing, and there never will be. He does not know what he wants. I know. It is a wife, but it will not be me. I have told him so. And Barbara, you have been getting me lots of invalid food. We must settle up accounts."