Behold in yon skies
This wild night is passing away while I speak.
Lo! above us the day-spring beginning to break!
Something wakens within me, and warms to the beam.
Is it hope that awakens?
"My bairn was unco' fashed aboot naething," said Nurse Martha to herself as she trotted about the cottage that day, trying to be very busy, but finding the process hard.
The fact was this: Martha was considerably perplexed. She had been sent to Middlethorpe because her young master was anxious about this lady, in whom he had taken so deep an interest; he had given the old woman as a reason for his anxiety that he had a strong suspicion about her landlady—the only other person in the house—believing her to be not only an untrustworthy person, but specially antagonistic to Mrs. Grey.
Martha Foster had been requested to watch this person. She had watched, and what had she found out? Only an almost superfluous devotion on Jane Rodgers's part.
Through the whole of that day Mrs. Grey had been suffering from a kind of nervous depression. The thoughtful kindness of her attendant, which seemed to be offered as a tribute of affection, could not possibly be exceeded. Nothing was left for Martha to do. The landlady was even inclined to resent her interference in any personal attendance on Mrs Grey.
Her cold, quiet way of saying that, having known Mrs. Grey some time, it was only natural she should understand her ways better than a stranger, quite surprised the old woman.
"Gang yer ain gait, my gude woman," she had answered. "I'm blithe to hear ye ken your wark and love yer bonny leddy sae weel."
And then the landlady had looked at her with a kind of suspicion. Turning away, she had said in a low, constrained voice, "I should love her if any one should."
What, perhaps, appeared still more mysterious to Nurse Martha was that Mrs. Grey seemed thoroughly to understand, and even to return, the feelings her landlady cherished for her.
When she was at her worst—and in the early part of the day the pain in her head had been maddening—she could look up with a smile that was almost one of pleasure at the anxious, hard-featured face leaning over her, and receive with a sweet gratitude services which to the old woman, experienced in nursing, seemed unnecessary and obtrusive.