"I'll go to Mr. Brock. Is that the letter, Olive? Thank you. How long will you stop here?"
"Until Mrs. Drabble is better. When you return home, Laurence, please ask Miss Slarge to come here. Margery!"
The child was shaking and white. "Please, please, what is the matter?" she asked, catching Olive by the hand.
Olive looked at her in silence and with pity. If it had been a painful task to inform Mrs. Drabble of the truth, it was a much more terrible one to inform Margery. With a nod to Mallow, she led the child from the room; and Laurence, feeling somewhat de trop in this scene of domestic grief, slipped away, not ill-pleased to have the opportunity. It was vexing, in one way, that Olive could not come with him; but on reflection he could not regret her absence.
At the corner of the Vicarage he was confronted by a she-Cerberus, in the person of Mr. Brock's deaf housekeeper. This grim and lean spinster might once have been a human flower, but the sap was now gone out of her, and she had withered on the stalk in a state of single-blessedness. Even Mallow's good looks and polite inquiries failed to impress her. She was the sworn enemy of all male-kind. At the outset she declined to admit Mallow; "indeed, he's much too ill," she said. But in the end she was so far prevailed upon as to consent to convey a message. This resulted in prompt permission for the visitor to enter the sick-room, whither the sour spinster led him with obvious reluctance. She closed the door on him with a bang, and returned to vent her ill-temper in the kitchen.
The vicar had transferred himself from his bedroom to the study. He was lying on a sofa drawn close up to the window. His eyes were unnaturally bright and sunken, and his skin was the colour of wax. The few weeks of confinement to the house had aged him inconceivably. But he appeared to be in good spirits, and received Mallow most cordially.
"You find me much afflicted, Mr. Mallow," said he, cheerfully, "but I am not without hope of recovery. I contrive to keep up my spirits, which is, I suppose, a greater preventive of inanition than the most stringent of medicines."
"I am indeed glad to know you are better, Mr. Brock. Will conversation tire you?"
"Not at all. It is a pleasure to converse intelligently. How is Mrs. Carson?"
"Miss Bellairs is quite well," said Laurence, prepared for this question. Brock turned an astonished look on his visitor. "But why do you call Olive by her maiden name?"