She nodded, with her implacable kindliness, and asked where Frances was.
“In her room,” said Rosamund rather sullenly. “She is lying down.”
“Lying down at twelve o’clock in the morning!—and on a day like this,” added Bertha, with another reproachful glance at the cracked, baking ground and still sunlight outside. “Is her head very bad?”
“Yes.”
“I must go and investigate. I expect she needs one of my special compresses of eau de Cologne and cold water. Well, well!”
She began to mount the stairs slowly, making no attempt to disguise that her walk had slightly tired her.
“Stairs are no joke, at my age,” she panted laughingly over her shoulder to Morris; “and with my figure. I be growin’ a bit broad-like across, ma dear!”
Morris laughed, and watched her disappear up the first short flight of stairs. He turned to Rosamund rather shyly. Shyness was not at all inherent in Morris Severing, but the advent of Mrs. Tregaskis and her few crisp, kindly sentences, had somehow cut across the atmosphere of joyous security in which he had met Rosamund that morning.
As he turned to her, Bertha’s broad face, reddened by heat and exertion, appeared over the balusters.
“Rosamund, my dear, come up here a minute, will you?”