§ 11
They sat by the fire as she had foreseen, Sophia pretending to be busy with her embroidery, Rose, in a straight-backed chair, reading a book. Henrietta sat on a low stool with a book open on her knee, but she did not read it. The fire talked to itself, said silly things and chuckled, or murmured sentimentally. That chatter, vaguely insane, and the turning of Rose’s pages, the drawing of Sophia’s silks through the stuff and the click of her scissors, were the only sounds until, suddenly, Sophia gave a groan and fell back in her chair. Rose, very much startled, glanced at Henrietta and jumped up.
“It’s her heart,” Henrietta said with the superiority of her knowledge. “I’ll get her medicine.” She came back with it. “She was like this when Aunt Caroline died, but I promised not to tell. If she has this she will be better.”
It was Henrietta who poured the liquid into the glass and applied it to Sophia’s lips. She was, she felt, the practical person, and it was she, and not Aunt Rose, who had been trusted by Aunt Sophia. “She told me where she kept the stuff,” Henrietta continued calmly. “There, that’s better.”
Sophia recovered with apologies: a little faintness; it was nothing. In a few minutes she would go to bed. They helped her there.
“You ought to have told me, Henrietta,” Rose said on the landing.
“I couldn’t. She wished it to be our secret.” It was pleasant to feel that Aunt Rose was out of this affair.
“We must have the doctor and she ought not to be alone to-night.”
I’ll sleep on the sofa in her room.”
“No, Henrietta, you need more sleep than I do.”