“O, sir, she was my all!” she sobbed; “she was my all!”
She could say no more than this, but kept repeating it again and again. “She was all I had in the world; the only thing I cared for.”
George Greswold touched her shoulder with protecting gentleness. There was not a peasant in the village for whom he had not infinite tenderness—pitying their infirmities, forgiving their errors, inexhaustible in benevolence towards them all. He had set himself to make his dependents happy as the first duty of his position. And yet he had done them evil unwittingly. He had cost this poor widow her dearest treasure—her one ewe lamb.
“Bear up, if you can, my good soul,” he said; “I know that it is hard.”
“Ah, sir, you’d know it better if it was your young lady that was stricken down!” exclaimed the widow bitterly; and the Squire walked away from the cottage-gate without another word.
Yes, he would know it better then. His heart was heavy enough now. What would it be like if she were smitten?
She was much the same next day: languid, with an aching head and some fever. She was not very feverish. On the whole, the doctor was hopeful, or he pretended to be so. He could give no positive opinion yet, nor could Dr. Hutchinson. They were both agreed upon that point; and they were agreed that the polluted water in the garden well had been the cause of the village epidemic. Analysis had shown that it was charged with poisonous gas.
Mr. Greswold hastened his preparations for the journey to Scotland with a feverish eagerness. He wrote to engage a sleeping-carriage on the Great Northern. They were to travel on Thursday, leaving home before noon, dining in town, and starting for the North in the evening. If Lola’s illness were indeed the slight indisposition which everybody hoped it was, she might be quite able to travel on Thursday, and the change of air and the movement would do her good.
“She is always so well in Scotland,” said her father.