Madge entered, and said: 'Mr. Woodseer has seen baby and Martha and the donkey all safe.'
'He is kind,' said Carinthia. 'Do we right to bathe the wound? It seems right to wash it. Little things that seem right may be exactly wrong after all, when we are ignorant. I know burning the wound is right.'
Madge asked: 'But, my lady, who is to do it?'
'You would do it, dear, if I shrank,' her mistress replied.
'Oh, my lady, I don't know, I can't say. Burning a child! And there's our baby.'
'He has had me nearly his time.'
'Oh, my dear lady! Would the mother consent?'
'My Madge! I have so few of their words yet. You would hold the child to save it from a dreadful end.'
'God help me, my lady—I would, as long as I live I will . . . . Oh! poor infant, we do need our courage now.'
Seeing that her mistress had not a tear or a tremor, the girl blinked and schooled her quailing heart, still under the wicked hope that the mother would not consent; in a wonderment at this lady, who was womanly, and who could hold the red iron at living flesh, to save the poor infant from a dreadful end. Her flow of love to this dear lady felt the slicing of a cut; was half revulsion, half worship; uttermost worship in estrangement, with the further throbbing of her pulses.