“No, no, it won’t. My legs are weak—not my fingers. Let me make something, and surprise Eve with it when it is finished.”
“I don’t think Mrs. Vansittart would like you to know, miss. It is a secret.”
“Yes, but Eve knows that I know. I told her that I had been dreaming about her, and that I dreamt there was a baby. It was after I heard you and Paulette whispering—I really did dream—and Eve kissed me, and cried a little, and said perhaps my dream might come true.”
Peggy being very urgent, her nurse brought her some fine flannel, as soft as silk, and cut out a flannel shawl for the unknown, and instructed Peggy as to the manner in which it was to be made, and Peggy was propped up with pillows, and began a floss-silk scallop with neat little stitches, and with an earnest laboriousness which was a touching spectacle; but, alas! after ten minutes of strenuous labour, great beads of perspiration began to roll down Peggy’s flushed face, and the thin arm and hand trembled with the effort.
“Oh, Miss Margaret, you mustn’t work any more,” cried Benson, shocked at her appearance.
“I’m afraid I can’t, Nurse; not any more to-day,” sighed Peggy, sinking back into the pillows, breathless and exhausted. “But I’ll go on with baby’s shawl to-morrow. Please fold it up for me and keep it in your basket. Eve mustn’t see it till it’s finished. The stitches are not too long, are they?”
No, the stitches were very small, but crowded one upon another in a manner that indicated resolute effort and failing sight.
“I feel as if I had been making shawls all day, like the poor woman in the poem,” said Peggy. “‘Stitch, stitch, stitch, with eyelids heavy and dim!’ How odd it is that everything seems difficult when one is ill! I thought it was only my legs that were weak, but I’m afraid it’s the whole of me. My finger aches with the weight of my thimble—the dear little gold thimble my brother-in-law gave me on Christmas Day.”
She put the little thimble to her lips, and kissed it as if it were a sentient thing. Vansittart came into the room while she was so engaged.
“Oh, there you are,” she said. “Do you know what I was thinking about?”