“Poor old soul,” he said to the nurse, after meeting this piteous gaze, “she is eating out her heart here, but it won’t be for long—do all you can for her, nurse; she is breaking up fast.”
The old woman did not catch the words, but she saw the compassionate glance, and observed the infirmarian’s eyes directed towards her with a certain amount of interest—merely professional interest if she had but known it—and all at once a project took shape in her mind. If she asked for the rosy plate now, perhaps they would not refuse her.
When the nurse inquired later on if she wished for anything, she took courage to proffer her petition, very feebly and incoherently. There was a plate, a plate which belonged to her, the rosy plate as she called it; the lady kept it: the lady what lived in the room downstairs. Would the nurse ask if she might have it—this in a strained and tremulous whisper—she would keep it under her bed-clothes and no one should see, but if she might just have it.
The nurse demurred, but good-naturedly, patting her pillows the while. The matron, perhaps, would not be very well pleased if it were asked for; it was a little difficult to ask her to break the rules; and, after all, the plate couldn’t do Maria much good if it was to be kept under the bed-clothes.
“Oh, yes, it would,” pleaded Maria.
“Well, then, go to sleep, and we’ll see about it in the morning.”
But when the morning came the nurse was busy; and in the afternoon the matron was out. Thus, on one pretext or another, the realisation of the poor old woman’s desire was perpetually postponed; and meanwhile she herself grew hourly weaker. The feeble voice continued to falter her request whenever the nurse came near her bed, and when she moved away Maria’s pathetic gaze followed her, until the heavy lids dropped over the weary eyes, and she forgot for a little while her unfulfilled longing.
Once, on opening her eyes after one of these brief spells of slumber, she saw the doctor’s kind, familiar face looking down at her. His voice had penetrated faintly to her inner consciousness before she had felt equal to the task of raising her lids.
“Sinking fast!”—these were the words that had fallen upon her ears.
With the opening of Maria’s eyes there had leaped into them the appeal which during her waking moments was never absent from them. The doctor bent over her kindly.