"Because he promised me that he would come."
"But, Lard bless 'ee, he meant so be as he got leave. If 'tis true that he be safe in France——"
"I know he be safe."
Mrs. Yellam glanced at her anxiously. Was the girl light-headed? She must know that if Alfred were missing, owing—as Fancy had been discreetly told—to some injury to his head which had caused him to stray from the British lines, his first steps, when he became himself again, would be directed back to his battalion. Wisely, she busied herself about the room, entreating her patient to compose herself to sleep. Presently Fancy dozed off, and Mrs. Yellam, softly approaching the bed, examined her critically. She looked startlingly pretty. A faint colour tinged lips and cheeks; her skin was translucently clear; her hair, regularly brushed by Mrs. Yellam, lay thick and lustrous above her forehead.
It was almost impossible to behold her as a widow.
For the first time since she had dedicated all her energies to fighting for this frail life doubt assailed Mrs. Yellam. Fancy's hand lay upon the white counterpane. Mrs. Yellam laid her hand beside it and compared the two.
All her experience of life as it is lived by people who cannot afford servants, the endless bondage to manual labour, the washing, scrubbing of floors and pots and pans, the cooking, the mending, rose up in her ample mind, and filled it with poignant misgiving. Could this attenuated hand, soft and weak as a child's, fend for Lizzie if—if Death came at the despairing call of Susan Yellam?
She clenched her own hand, nearly as large and powerful as a man's fist. Fancy must live to mother her child. She had no claim on Death, this young, pretty creature, so easily pleased with life, so happy with simple things, so contented with what she possessed, incapable of envying those above her in station. Time would be kind to her. Time would enshrine Alfred in her heart as the man who had taught her to love, who had given her a fidelity and tenderness rarely found in cottages or palaces. She might marry again. Why not? It says much for Susan Yellam's essential wisdom that she could visualise such a possibility, however remote, without a pang.
A couple of hours passed.
Lizzie Alfreda was fed and washed, with Fancy looking on, and replaced in her cradle. Mrs. Yellam mended the fire, and went down to the kitchen to prepare supper. Fancy seemed to be refreshed after her nap, but some inflection of her voice warned an obstinate old woman that strength was departing, very slowly, almost imperceptibly, as the hour-hand moves round the dial.