“She is starved,” said the doctor grimly.
“Oh, you cannot mean it!” cried Bertha, in a tone of protest, while her face went very white.
“I do mean it, or I should not have said it,” said the doctor bluntly.
“But surely, surely that need not have been?” cried Bertha, who was dreadfully distressed. “We are all poor, of course, and dreadfully pushed for ready money, but so far as I know no one has had to go short of food yet. Besides, we understood that Eunice had money from the bank in Winnipeg, just the same as Mrs. Ellis does.”
“Of course she has had it, and that is where the maddening part of it comes in,” said the doctor crossly. “But instead of living on the money, as a sensible person would, and leaving her brother to make good the value of the postal orders which were destroyed on that black Sunday, the silly woman goes and simply starves herself to death in order that the loss may be made good the sooner.”
“Oh, what shall I do? I have been saying the most dreadful things to her to-day, but I did not know all this!” exclaimed Bertha. “Oh, she must have thought me cruel, cruel! I would go back now and tell her how sorry I am, only I should be so late home, and Mrs. Smith will not want to stay with Mrs. Ellis much longer.”
“And pray, what was it you said that needs so much repentance?” asked the doctor, a gleam of amusement showing on his face; for he had never found Bertha addicted to cutting speeches.
“She said that she did not want to get better, and I told her that it was miserably selfish of her to want to die when she was so useful, and everyone needed her friendship and advice so much. It was horrid of me, I know, but I felt as if I had to say it, and so out it came. Poor Eunice, she looked so startled and surprised; for I don’t suppose that anyone ever dreamed of calling her selfish before.”
The doctor burst into a shout of laughter. “Well done, Miss Bertha, I should not wonder if you have half-cured my patient for me, and if so you have earned my lasting gratitude. No one can even guess what a fight I have had for her life, and all because of this mistaken idea of self-sacrifice. Why, she had better have let the Government people send her to prison for embezzling moneys entrusted to her care; for at least she would have got enough to eat then, and this illness would have been averted.”
But Bertha was almost reduced to tears by the thought of how disagreeable she had been, and was not even comforted by the doctor’s congratulations on the drastic measures she had used to bring Eunice to a more reasonable frame of mind. The thought of the things she had said haunted her all the way home, making her silent and absorbed, instead of bright and merry from the pleasure of the gifts she had been out to bestow.