She tapped her fingers together indulgently.
"So I thought," she murmured. "Now, what do you fancy, sir?"
"Dear me!" I exclaimed, for her face was horribly contorted. "Are you in pain?"
"Agonies!" said Miss Whiffle.
"Toothache?"
"Neuralgia, sir, for my sins."
"Is there—is there no remedy?"
She was taken with a sharp spasm of laughter, mirthless, but consciously expressive of all the familiar processes of self-effacement under torture.
"I arks nothing but my duty, sir," she said. "That is the myrrh and balsam to a racking 'ed. Not but what I owns to a shrinking like unto death over the thought of what lays before me this very morning. Rest and quiet is needful, but it's little I shall get of either out of a kitching fire in the dog days. And what would you fancy for your dinner, sir?"
"I am sorry," I murmured, "that you should suffer on my account. I suppose there is nothing cold—"