"Yes, I tried to cure it, and last night Mammy Riah doctored her. The child is so delicate that the slightest ailment is dangerous. It seems strange that she should be so frail. Mr. Blackburn looks strong, and his wife was always well until recently, wasn't she?"
For a moment Mrs. Timberlake stared through the window at a sparrow which was perched on the topmost branch of a juniper. "I never saw any one hate to have a child as much as Angelica did," she said presently in her dry tones. "She carried on like a crazy woman about it. Some women are like that, you know."
"Yes, I know, but she is devoted to Letty now."
The housekeeper did not reply, and her face grew greyer and harsher than ever.
"No one could be sweeter than she is with her," said Caroline, after a moment in which she tried to pierce mentally the armour of Mrs. Timberlake's reserve. "She isn't always so silent," she thought. "I hear her talking by the hour to Mammy Riah, but it is just as if she were afraid of letting out something if she opened her lips. I wonder if she is really so prejudiced against Mrs. Blackburn that she can't talk of her?" Though Caroline's admiration for Angelica had waned a little on closer acquaintance, she still thought her kind and beautiful, except in her incomprehensible attitude to the old sewing woman in Pine Street. The recollection of that scene, which she had found it impossible to banish entirely, was a sting in her memory; and as she recalled it now, her attitude toward Angelica changed insensibly from that of an advocate to a judge.
"Oh, Angelica is sweet enough," said the housekeeper suddenly, with a rasping sound, as if the words scraped her throat as she uttered them, "if you don't get in her way." Then facing Caroline squarely, she added in the same tone, "I'm not saying anything against Angelica, Miss Meade. Our grandmothers were sisters, and I am not the sort to turn against my own blood kin, but you'll hear a heap of stories about the way things go on in this house, and I want you to take it from me in the beginning that there are a plenty of worse husbands than David Blackburn. He isn't as meek as Moses, but he's been a good friend to me, and if I wanted a helping hand, I reckon I'd go to him now a sight quicker than I would to Angelica, though she's my kin and he isn't."
Rising hurriedly, as she finished, she gave a curt little laugh and exclaimed, "Well, there's one thing David and I have in common. We're both so mortal shutmouthed because when we once begin to talk, we always let the cat out of the bag. Now, if you're through, you can go straight upstairs and have a word with Angelica before she begins to dress."
She went over to the sideboard, and began counting the silver aloud, while Caroline pushed back her chair, and ran impatiently upstairs to Mrs. Blackburn's room. At her knock the maid, Mary, opened the door, and beyond her Angelica's voice said plaintively, "Oh, Miss Meade, Mary tells me that Letty's cold is very bad. I am so anxious about her."
A breakfast tray was before her, and while she looked down at the china coffee service, which was exquisitely thin and fragile, she broke off a piece of toast, and buttered it carefully, with the precise attention she devoted to the smallest of her personal needs. It seemed to Caroline that she had never appeared so beautiful as she did against the lace pillows, in her little cap and dressing sack of sky-blue silk.
"I came to tell you," said Caroline. "She complains of pain whenever she moves, and I'm afraid, unless something is done at once, it may turn into pneumonia."