“Bring me a genuine pound or two of the cheese, Rhoda,” requested Miss Barfoot gaily.
“I will. What they sell in the shops there is all sham, Mr. Barfoot—like so much else in this world.”
“I care nothing about the cheese. That’s all very well for a matter-of-fact person like cousin Mary, but I have a strong vein of poetry; you must have noticed it?”
When they shook hands,—
“You will really bring me the flowers?” Everard said in a voice sensibly softened.
“I will make a note of it,” was the reassuring answer.
CHAPTER XI
AT NATURE’S BIDDING
The sick girl whom Miss Barfoot had been to see was Monica Madden.
With strange suddenness, after several weeks of steady application to her work, in a cheerful spirit which at times rose to gaiety, Monica became dull, remiss, unhappy; then violent headaches attacked her, and one morning she declared herself unable to rise. Mildred Vesper went to Great Portland Street at the usual hour, and informed Miss Barfoot of her companion’s illness. A doctor was summoned; to him it seemed probable that the girl was suffering from consequences of overstrain at her old employment; there was nervous collapse, hysteria, general disorder of the system. Had the patient any mental disquietude? Was trouble of any kind (the doctor smiled) weighing upon her? Miss Barfoot, unable to answer these questions, held private colloquy with Mildred; but the latter, though she pondered a good deal with corrugated brows, could furnish no information.