“Judith, I am ashamed of you! If it was our last loaf we should divide with a sick man, though that sick man were the greatest miscreant on earth! And with a whole barrel of flour, and when the flour gives out, a whole hogshead of wheat in the grain.”
“Yis; but how is the whate to be ground at all, at all? Sure it will be slow work grinding it in the coffeemill! Troth it’s to your own interests I’m spaking—not mine!”
“I know it, Judith. But now do an act of charity, and procure the tea and toast for the suffering sinner.”
“Sure I’ll do it to plaze ye, and for no other raison in life,” said Judith, as she went about to execute the order.
When this refreshment was ready, Justin took it in to the sick man and served him carefully before coming to his own breakfast.
Britomarte waited for Justin, and when he returned, the coffee, rice muffins and broiled birds were brought in and they sat down to the table to enjoy their morning meal.
After it was over, Justin took some books and carried them in to the sick man, who seemed to be suffering from a severe cold and debility more than any other illness. And then Justin went out to his work, which upon this day consisted of clearing away the litter strewn all over the ground by the storm of the past night.
Britomarte went into her chamber and sat down at her favorite window to sew and to watch the sea.
She was turning a dress for Judith, and she pinned the end of it to her apron while running up a long seam. Every time she found it necessary to change the place of the pin, she raised her head and looked out at the ocean.
How monotonous and solitary looked that ocean! No change ever came over it except the change from storm to calm or from day to night, and vice versa. No living thing ever appeared on it or above it except the plunging fish and the sailing water fowl. But she loved it; and she watched its gradual subsidence from passion to peace as she would have watched the falling to sleep of some sufferer who was dear to her.