'You'd better lie still, Ralph; you'll only make yourself bad again. Now that you feel a little easier you should try to go to sleep.'
So far she got without betraying any emotion, but as she continued to advise him her voice began to tremble, her presence of mind to forsake her, and she burst into a flood of tears.
'I don't know how you can treat me as you do,' she said, sobbing hysterically. 'I do everything—I give up my night's rest to you, I work hard all day for you, and in return I only receive hard words. Oh, it's no use,' she said; 'I can bear it no longer; you'll have to get someone else to mind you.'
This outburst of passion came suddenly upon Mr. Ede, and for some time he was at a loss how to proceed. At last, feeling a little sorry, he resolved to make it up, and putting out his hand to her, he said:
'Now, don't cry, Kate; perhaps I was wrong in speaking so crossly. I didn't mean all I said—it's this horrid asthma.'
'Oh, I can bear anything but to be told I neglect you—and when I stop up watching you three nights running——'
These little quarrels were of constant occurrence. Irritable by nature, and rendered doubly so by the character of his complaint, the invalid at times found it impossible to restrain his ill-humour; but he was not entirely bad; he inherited a touch of kind-heartedness from his mother, and being now moved by Kate's tears, he said:
'That's quite true, and I'm sorry for what I said; you are a good little nurse. I won't scold you again. Make it up.'
Kate found it hard to forget merely because Ralph desired it, and for some time she refused to listen to his expostulations, and walked about the room crying, but her anger could not long resist the dead weight of sleep that was oppressing her, and eventually she came and sat down in her own place by him. The next step to reconciliation was more easy. Kate was not vindictive, although quicktempered, and at last, amid some hysterical sobbing, peace was restored. Ralph began to speak of his asthma again, telling how he had fancied he was going to die, and when she expressed her fear and regret he hastened to assure her that no one ever died of asthma, that a man might live fifty, sixty, or seventy years, suffering all the while from the complaint; and he rambled on until words and ideas together failed him, and he fell asleep. With a sigh of relief Kate rose to her feet, and seeing that he was settled for the night, she turned to leave him, and passed into her room with a slow and dragging movement; but the place had a look so cold and unrestful that it pierced through even her sense of weariness, and she stood urging her tired brains to think of what she should do. At last, remembering that she could get a pillow from the room they reserved for letting, she turned to go.
Facing their room, and only divided by the very narrowest of passages, was the stranger's apartment.