“Ah!” she said, “you must go away at once. I’m afraid you feel worse than you will admit. If it was only your head I might help to cure it; but really you had better go—” she looked at him—was it compellingly or pleadingly? “Go,” she half whispered, with obvious entreaty in her eyes; then she veiled it with a smile of mock deprecation, as if—his heart stood still with delight—as if she was loathe to see him go—yet for his sake wished it. Temperance and Mabella having been to the garret where the herbs were hung to dry, re-entered the kitchen in time to hear Vashti’s good-night words.
“It’s a deal easier,” said Temperance, in the course of a circumstantial account of the occurrence later on. “It’s a deal easier to say ‘Go’ with a dying-duck expression, turning up the whites of your eyes, than to go yourself up them stairs and that pesky ladder to the garret for yarbs.”
Fortunately Sidney never knew of Temperance’s profane criticisms upon his goddess.
“Yes—I will go,” he said to Vashti. He spoke vaguely, as of one hardly awake to the realities about him; and indeed he was stunned by the glory that suddenly had shone in upon him when her feigned solicitude made his heart leap.
“You are very good,” he said.
“Ah, no—” said Vashti simply, but her eyes were eloquent. Girlish coquetries became subtle sorceries as she employed them.
The boneset tea had been duly despatched, but morning found him racked by an intolerable headache, that acme of nervous pain of which only supra-sensitive folk know. He half staggered as he sought the porch.
Temperance came to him presently.
“How do you feel this mornin’?” she asked.