What all these commissions meant to Rachel can be imagined; but she knew that if her mother-in-law had the faintest idea of how tired she felt and how terribly full her days were she not have asked her to do this extra work.
Curiously enough, Mrs. Greville, after that time of anxiety about Rachel leaving the baby alone, had scarcely mentioned Pat; indeed Rachel wondered at times if she had forgotten him. Anyhow, she had quite forgotten how difficult it was to leave him so often with Polly, who indeed had other work to do.
What tried Rachel more than anything was that when her mother-in-law was getting better, she suddenly relapsed into her old habit of thinking her incapable. She would say "No, you had better not go and see Mrs. Guy. She is a woman that needs careful handling. You'd probably offend her, ask Mrs. Stone." Or when Rachel had taken pains to make some appetising little dish for her, denying herself perhaps an egg for breakfast so as to be able to spare one for her mother-in-law, Mrs. Greville would worry at her extravagance, reminding her that she was the wife of a poor parson, and that if she were not more careful she would land him in debt. Rachel put all these uncomfortable moods down to illness, but it did not make her life easier.
One day after a specially trying time, she hurried home to find to her surprise the Bishop sitting in the drawing-room.
The sight of his dear familiar face was almost too much for her. She clung to his hand without speaking.
In a moment he saw that Rachel was overdone.
"Come and sit down my dear child," he said. His tone of voice was so full of kindness and sympathy that Rachel nearly gave way to tears.
"You have come just at the wrong time," she said, with a faint laugh in which the Bishop detected the tears that were not shed. "I am so tired that I can't feel as glad as I know that I am to see you."
The Bishop looking at the girl, was shocked at the change in her. That she was not only tired, but seriously ill, he saw at a glance.
"You have been working too hard," he said quietly. "What have you been doing?"