“Pst! Pouf! Hush, sweetheart, hush! ’Tis nought. A few days more and the master will be well. A few days more and Pierre will come—— Ah! but I had my hands about his ears this minute! That would teach him, yes, to turn his back on duty, him. The ingrate! Well, what the Lord sends the body must bear.”
Margot lifted her head, shook back her hair, and smiled wanly. The veriest ghost of her old smile, it was, yet even such a delight to the other’s eyes.
“Good. That’s right. Rouse up. There’s a wing of a fowl in the cupboard, left from the master’s broth——”
“Angelique, he didn’t touch it, to-day. Not even touch it.”
“’Tis nought. When the fever is on the appetite is gone. Will be all right once that is over.”
“But, will it ever be over? Day after day, just the same. Always that tossing to and fro, the queer, jumbled talk, the growing thinner—all of the dreadful signs of how he suffers. Angelique, if I could bear it for him! I am so young and strong and worth nothing to this world while he’s so wise and good. Everybody who ever knew him must be the better for Uncle Hughie.”
“’Tis truth. For that, the good Lord will spare him to us. Of that be sure.”
“But I pray and pray and pray, and there comes no answer. He is never any better. You know that. You can’t deny it. Always before when I have prayed the answer has come swift and sure, but now——”
“Take care, Margot. ’Tis not for us to judge the Lord’s strange ways. Else were not you and me and the master shut up alone on this island, with no doctor near, and only our two selves to keep the dumb things in comfort, though, as for dumbness, hark yonder beast!”