Mrs. Alfrick pulled a long face and shook her head. "Didn't your father tell you? She's alive, and that's about all."
Mary started. "Mrs. Randal—dying! You don't mean it, mother!"
"I do. It's the bronchitis. She never was over strong. She caught cold the beginning of this severe weather, you know, and for the last week she's been as ill as ill can be. John's so grumpy, I haven't liked to go there much myself, but I saw Ellen Nash this morning, and she'd seen the doctor coming out, and he said it was very serious."
"Did he say there was no hope?"
"Well, I can't repeat his words, but that's how I understood her. She said this here frosty fog was killing her, spite of all John could do."
"Who is nursing her?" said Mary.
"Why, John. He don't seem to care about the neighbours coming in. Mrs. Nash says she'd do anything, 'cause Mrs. Randal was always good to her; but there, she's a weak sort of creature, not much use in a sick-room."
Mary did not say much. Mrs. Alfrick went on talking, and she sat listening like somebody in a dream. Perhaps half-an-hour passed in this way. She gazed at the fire, but saw Mrs. Randal's pale kind face, and remembered that June day long ago when John was out in the thunderstorm, and his mother had said words that sounded so sweet, telling the girl Polly that if trouble was to come she would sooner have her there than any one else. Then the storm had passed away, and in the golden evening John had come in with the little lost child in his arms.
"GOD forgive me!" thought Mary. "Even then I was a bit jealous of that child. I tried to do my duty by her, so I did, but that's not much after all."
Presently one of the children upstairs began to cry, and Mrs. Alfrick went up to it, leaving Mary alone in the parlour. After a few minutes she went out again into the passage and opened the front door. All was the same there—cold, still, misty and shining. Mary turned back into the house, remembering that she had left her warm shawl in the parlour. She threw it round her head and shoulders, slipped gently out once more, down the path, through the garden gate, into the quiet lane. Less than five minutes, even in this thick mist which obscured the way, would bring her to John's door.