The mother's mind failed to grasp it: that message. The callous cruelty of it. It seemed too—too impossible. Had he misunderstood—misjudged her? Could it be? Had she fallen so low in his estimation? A crimson flood overspread her face.... After a pause, as if clutching at a straw, she inquired:
"Did you see him yourself?"
"Yes, ma'am. He seemed to wonder what you could want with him. Said it would keep, whatever it was, till the morning."
"Keep—till—the—morning!"
Gracie's pleading, her own promise, rang in her ears! Keep till the morning. The irony of it! She staggered against the wall, passed her hand across her brow—loath to believe that the author, fond of children, could behave so—asked again—
"You are quite sure you saw him yourself?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am. I know Mr. Masters quite well by sight." She did—Masters, the blacksmith! She had been to his shop in the High Street, and in response to her ringing of his house bell, he had put his head out of his bedroom window and spoken to her. Not in any very pleasant tone; he was not pleased that his beauty sleep had been broken into.
He was an early-to-bed and early-to-rise old man. He could see no sense in turning out at past eleven o'clock at night for any one. Not even for a sick child or for the finest lady in the land.
As he went grumbling back to his bed the blacksmith muttered that some of them fine ladies seemed to think it was a nonner to be at their beck and call; summat to be proud of, it was, for a poor man like hisself. None of their airs for him—he wasn't having any, this time. Such was his grumble; weighted with a plethora of adjectives—of a quite unprintable kind.
The mother staggered back into the bedroom, to the child's side. White-faced, trembling in every limb, supported herself by the bed rail. Noted the hour: past eleven o'clock. The crucial time the doctor had spoken of was approaching.