'That's what I think myself,' Mrs. Rawson answered. 'I'm afraid there's nothing to be done, but I thought I'd better come and tell you. You see, when I went up with some beef-tea she looked to me like one that hadn't many days to live. I may be mistaken, of course.'
'She should have a nurse,' Mrs. Forest said.
'I do all I can for her,' Mrs. Rawson murmured, 'but you see with three children to look after and only one maid,'—the two women began to talk together and the thread-paper man took advantage of the opportunity to whisper to Dick that he thought he could manage to do the flower-girls' dresses at five shillings less.
'That will be all right,' Dick replied. 'I will call round in the morning,
Mr. Shaffle.'
Mrs. Forest held out her jacket to Dick, who helped her into it.
'Where are you going … shall you be coming back again?' he asked.
'I'm going to nurse your wife, Dick,' she said, picking up her long feather boa, 'and isn't all that is happening now a vindication that we did well not to yield ourselves to ourselves?—for had we done so our regrets would be now unanimous, and I shouldn't be able to go to her with clear conscience…. She's been drinking heavily again, no doubt,' Mrs. Forest said, turning to Mrs. Rawson. 'But we mustn't judge or condemn anyone, so Jesus hath said. I'll go with you now, Mrs. Rawson, and you'll perhaps come to-morrow, Dick, to see her?'
'If I could help my wife I'd go, Laura, but as I've often told you, my will to help her was spent long ago; it would be of no use.' Laura's eyes lit up for a moment. 'But if she asks to see me I'll go.' At these words Mrs. Forest's eyes softened, and he began to ask himself how much truth there was in Laura's resolve to go and attend upon his wife in what was no doubt a last agony. Seeing and hearing her put into his head remembrances of an actress, he could not remember which. Her demeanour was as lofty as any and her speech almost rose into blank verse at times; and he began to think that she had missed her vocation in life. It might have been that she was destined by nature for the stage. 'She's more mummer than myself or Kate,' he said to himself, and giving an ear to her outpourings, he recognized in them the rudiments of the grand style: and he admired her transitions—her voice would drop and she seemed to find her way back into homely speech. Her soul seemed to pass back and forwards easily, and Dick did not feel sure which was the real woman and which the fictitious. 'She doesn't know herself,' he said, for at that moment she had left the tripod and was sitting in imagination at the bedside in attendance, looking from the patient to the clock, administering the medicine on the exact time.
When Mrs. Rawson spoke about the length of the day and night she answered that she would take her work with her, and bade Dick not to be anxious about the changes he had asked her to make in the second act. 'They shall be made,' she said, 'and without laying myself open to any claim for demurrage.'
'Demurrage' Dick exclaimed.