"Look here! I must have some tea, now!" said Edwin curtly and yet appealingly to Maggie, who opened the door for him at Auntie Hamps's.
It was nearly eight o'clock. He had been to the hospital again, and, having reported in three words to Ingpen, whose condition was unchanged, had remained there some time. But he had said nothing to Ingpen about the woman. At six o'clock the matron had come into the room, and the nurse thenceforward until seven o'clock, when she went off duty, was a changed girl. Edwin slightly knew the matron, who was sympathetic but strangely pessimistic--considering her healthy, full figure.
"The water's boiling," answered Maggie, in a comforting tone, and disappeared instantly into the kitchen.
Edwin thought:
"There are some things that girl understands!"
She had shown no curiosity, no desire to impart news, because she had immediately comprehended that Edwin was, or imagined himself to be, at the end of his endurance. Maggie, with simple and surpassing wisdom had just said to herself: "He's been out all night, and he's not used to it." For a moment he felt that Maggie was wiser, and more intimately close to him, than anybody else in the world.
"In the dining-room," she called out from the kitchen.
And in the small dining-room there was a fire! It was like a living, welcoming creature. The cloth was laid, the gas was lighted. On the table was beautiful fresh bread and butter. A word, a tone, a glance of his on the previous evening had been enough to bring back the dining-room into use! Happily the wind suited the chimney. He had scarcely sat down in front of the fire when Maggie entered with the teapot. And at the sight of the teapot Edwin felt that he was saved. Before the tea was out of the teapot it had already magically alleviated the desperate sensations of physical fatigue and moral weariness which had almost overcome him on the way from the hospital in the chill and muddy dawn.
"What will you have to eat?" said Maggie.
"Nothing. I couldn't eat to save my life."