Maisie went out of the room, and resumed her sewing in the nursery, where the upper nurse sat with the six-months-old baby in her arms.
'Is your young lady going out riding this morning?' she asked.
'Indeed, Jane, I cannot tell ye,' answered Maisie with a toss of her head. 'What Miss Stella's ma would say to her nursing an ill-mannered person like yon I don't know. Miss Stella should leave her till us, and then she'd be cured a little of whims and whams. There, she has that awfu' swearin' cockie in the room, and now a dirty old saddle, and there comes the doctor. I wish he would cure her soon, and let her be packing with her duds and screws of horses.'
Servants who are accustomed to the refined courtesy of gentlewomen resent nothing more strongly than being spoken to roughly. This, indeed, is one of the causes which often creates a disastrous barrier between them and men in their own rank.
The sight which met Dr. Langdale on entering the sick-room that morning was a curious one. The large, dingy cockatoo stood on the toilet-table, close to the bed, muttering, 'Hang him—hang him!' in a rough, deep voice. The patient was sitting up in bed, an old saddle turned upside down before her, the lining ripped open, disclosing underneath one side a deep layer of extremely soiled bank-notes, on the other nuggets of gold, ranging from the size of peas to pigeon-eggs, some embedded in quartz, others with the earth still clinging to them. Stella stood at the foot of the bed, looking on in silent wonder. Neither had heard the doctor's tap, and even when he opened the door, saying, 'May I come in?' the patient went on with a calculation which absorbed all her faculties.
'Ten—twenty—forty—fifty—fifty-five; yes, that's the one-pounders—that is right. Then, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten——tenners; and five twenties, and two fifties. And the gold——'
'I fear you do not approve of this proceeding, Dr. Langdale?' said Stella as they shook hands.
'If anyone is to be blamed it's me, sir,' said the woman, who seemed to be thoroughly roused by the process of reckoning up the hoard before her.
The doctor tested her temperature, and found it rather high. 'If you throw yourself back, you know——' he began, in a grave voice.
'Well, sir, I know it makes my head beat; but it would have been worse to keep on thinking p'r'aps it was lost. I don't rightly remember things for days before I got here. That's my marriage lines, ma'am,' she said, holding out a very soiled slip of paper to Stella. 'I don't know what makes you so good to me, such an object as I must have been when you saw me. You couldn't tell what sort I might be. And I'd like you to know I'm an honest woman. And if things go wrong——'