So off set the two elder sisters and the pleasant looking young man together. Amy always was late, and Jessie felt one hope, that they might meet the two girls coming in together. Yet, as she whirred her machine, she reflected that after all it might be best for Amy in the end that all this folly and concealment should be put a stop to.
Out they went, talking; Mrs. Cuthbert asking questions, and pointing everything out to her son, and Aunt Rose delighted to answer.
"We do not hurry the maid," said Aunt Rose, as they drew near. "You see it is such a blessing to that poor little afflicted child to have her with him."
Perhaps Rose Lee, who had had her dreams and fancies like other people, was thinking of the tales where some one looks in at the window and sees the good young person bending over the sufferer's couch, and reading good books to him; but it was certainly not Amy whom she saw as the door stood open. There was the little boy on the old couch under the window, moaning a little, but it was his sister who was standing by him with a cup of something, coaxing him with "Now Teddy, do be a good boy, and drink it, do'ee now."
"Why, Polly," said Aunt Rose, "are you here?"
"Please, Miss Lee," said Polly, in a high squeaky voice of self-defence, "Our Ted is so bad, I couldn't go to school, not this afternoon."
"And where's Miss Amy? Not gone for the doctor?" asked Rose, seeing indeed that the poor child looked very ill.
"No, miss," said Polly. "Teacher Amy don't come now for more than a minute."
"Where is she then?" asked Rose, to whom the world seemed whirling round; while Ambrose Cuthbert stood at the door, and his mother was feeling the poor child's hands, and looking with dismay at the grease gathering on the half cold broth with which his sister had been trying to feed him.
But Polly's answer was quite ready—"Down the mead along with that there Wingfield and Cray's gal."