Somehow it was the sight of the tears which helped Bertha to rally her flagging powers, and to keep from slipping back into that gulf from which she had but just emerged. It was so rarely that Anne showed any sign of tears, and surely it must be something very much out of the common to induce them.
“Oh, I am all right,” said Bertha slowly. “I was tired, you know, and I was so afraid that I should not have supper ready in time for you.”
A cloud crept over the face of Anne. To her there seemed no reason why Bertha should have been overdone by the walk to Paston and back, while supper had not called for very active preparation. But Bertha always took so long to do the simplest thing, and even then the doing was mostly unsatisfactory.
“She looks clean worn out; I should put her to bed,” said the visitor, with such a clear understanding of just how Bertha felt, that she blessed him in her heart and wondered that he should be so wise.
“Yes, I should like to go to bed,” she murmured faintly, and then suddenly remembering all those new resolutions that she had made, she said hurriedly, as she tried to free herself from the arms which held her, “But I will wait and wash the supper dishes first, for Anne must be so tired with working all day.”
There was a note of derisive laughter from the man, but which was promptly checked as Anne exclaimed, in very real concern, “Oh, I am sure that she is ill, poor darling, because she does not trouble about the supper dishes as a rule!”
“Wait until the morning before making up your mind that she is bad,” said Roger Mortimer. “She may be quite all right when she has had a night of sleep. I will carry her to her room now, then you can put her to bed, and afterwards we will wash up the supper dishes together, you and I; it will be like old times.”
Bertha was drifting again, but she roused at this speech to make quite a vigorous protest—she could not, and would not, be carried to her room by this man, who was a stranger, or almost a stranger. The thought of the awful muddle—the unmade bed and the wild disorder which reigned there—seemed to give her a momentary spurt of strength. She must walk to her bed on her own feet—she must, she must!
But Anne broke in upon her gasping, half-incoherent protests with a quick word of common sense. “Bring her into my room, please. I must have her with me to-night, and mine is the only double bed in the house.”
Bertha dropped quiet with a sigh of relief. If there was no danger of her room being seen, she would just as soon be carried as walk, for her limbs seemed to have lost all power, and she felt quite stupid.