Lily had anticipated the question, which was always the preliminary, in the nursery, to an emphatic recommendation to mind her own business and leave Miss Vonnie to mind hers.
"Yes, she did," said Lily, feeling herself choke. God could hardly do much more than He had done already, even to a liar, and everything but present relief had become worthless of consideration.
"Now mind, if you've got me out of bed for nothing——" said Nurse threateningly. But she spoke in quite a kind voice, and put on her dressing-gown, and lit a candle. "Good gracious, child, why are you so white?" she asked Lily and took her hand protectingly and held it all the way to the night nursery.
Vonnie's moans were much louder now, and Lily, looking up anxiously at Nurse, felt that she must, for once, accept Vonnie's illness at its own valuation, and not at the slighting one that Vonnie herself would fain give to it.
"Now then, Miss Vonnie dear, what's all this?"
Nurse took Vonnie's hands down from her head. The odd look round Vonnie's eyes that had been so nearly imperceptible early in the evening had deepened in a very strange way, and after one glance at her small, leaden-coloured face, Nurse's manner changed altogether.
She went to the little medicine-cupboard high up on the wall, and lit the spirit-lamp, and heated water and put into it some sweet-smelling oil out of a green bottle. She put Vonnie's dressing-gown round her and a large shawl over that, and sat down in a low chair and took Vonnie on to her lap. Then she dipped some cotton-wool into the warm oil and put it into each ear, and all the time she was coaxing and pitying Vonnie with kind, soothing words.
Lily never forgot the exquisite ecstasy of relief with which she watched and heard it all from her own bed in the corner. The violent reaction from her state of nervous anguish was so great that she began to cry and sob quite quietly, scarcely knowing that she was doing so.
Vonnie's moaning ceased almost at once, and her whole attitude relaxed, and presently Nurse got up and put her gently down in the low chair, with a pillow behind her.
"I shall be back directly," she whispered reassuringly to Lily, opening the door very softly.