If she had been in any doubt as to Miss Duffy’s whereabouts, a voice from the room at the end of the little passage now settled the matter. “Is that Peggy?” it called.
Charlotte pushed boldly into the room with the bowl of gruel.
“No, Miss Duffy, me poor old friend, it’s me, Charlotte Mullen,” she said in her most cordial voice; “they told me below you were ill, but I thought you’d see me, and I brought your gruel up in my hand. I hope you’ll like it none the less for that!”
The invalid turned her night-capped head round from the wall and looked at her visitor with astonished, bloodshot eyes. Her hatchety face was very yellow, her long nose was rather red, and her black hair thrust itself out round the soiled frill of her night-cap in dingy wisps.
“You’re welcome, Miss Mullen,” she said with a pitiable attempt at dignity; “won’t you take a cheer?”
“Not till I’ve seen you take this,” replied Charlotte, handing her the bowl of gruel with even broader bonhomie than before.
Julia Duffy reluctantly sat up among her blankets, conscious almost to agony of the squalor of all her surroundings, conscious even that the blankets were of the homespun, madder-dyed flannel such as the poor people use, and taking the gruel, she began to eat it in silence. She tried to prop herself in this emergency with the recollection that Charlotte Mullen’s grandfather drank her grandfather’s port wine under this very roof, and that it was by no fault of hers that she had sunk while Charlotte had risen; but the wornout boots that lay on the floor where she had thrown them off, and the rags stuffed into the broken panes in the window, were facts that crowded out all consolation from bygone glories.
“Well, Miss Duffy,” said Charlotte, drawing up a chair to the bedside, and looking at her hostess with a critical eye, “I’m sorry to see you so sick; when Billy Grainy left the milk last night he told Norry you were laid up in bed, and I thought I’d come over and see if there was anything I could do for you.”
“Thank ye, Miss Mullen,” replied Julia stiffly, sipping the nauseous gruel with ladylike decorum, “I have all I require here.”
“Well, ye know, Miss Duffy, I wanted to see how you are,” said Charlotte, slightly varying her attack; “I’m a bit of a doctor, like yourself. Peggy Roche below told me you had what she called ‘an impression on the heart,’ but it looks to me more like a touch of liver.”