"Yes," Auntie Hamps agreed, but in a quite different tone, reluctant and critical. "I'm sure Maggie does her best. Oh! I'm sure she does ... Edwin!" Again she called him.
He approached the tumbled bed, and even sat on the edge of it, his hands in his pockets. Auntie Hamps, though breathing now more rapidly and with more difficulty, seemed to have revitalised herself at some mysterious source of energy. She was still preoccupied by the mental concentration and the effort of volition required for the smallest physical acts incident to her continued existence; but she had accumulated power for the furtherance of greater ends.
"D'ye want anything?" Edwin suggested, indicating the contents of the night-table.
She moved her head to signify a negative. Her pink-clad arms did not stir. And her whole being seemed to be suspended while she prepared for an exertion.
"I'm so relieved you've come," she said at length, slowly and painfully. "You can't think what a relief it is to me. I've really no one but you.... It's about that girl."
"What girl?"
"Minnie."
"The servant?"
Mrs. Hamps inclined her head, and fetched breath through the wide-open mouth. "I've only just found it out. She's in trouble. Oh! She admitted it to me a bit ago. I sent her downstairs. I wouldn't have her in my bedroom a minute longer. She's in trouble. I felt sure she was.... She was at class-meeting last Wednesday. And only yesterday I paid her her wages. Only yesterday! Here she lives on the fat of the land, and what does she do for it? I assure you I have to see to everything myself. I'm always after her.... In a month she won't be fit to be seen ... Edwin, I've never been so ashamed.... That I should have to tell such a thing to my own nephew!" She ceased, exhausted.
Edwin was somewhat amused. He could not help feeling amused at such an accident happening in the house of Mrs. Hamps.