“There’s one person you’ll nurse, if ever she’s sick,” replied Mevrouw, with a grunt, swallowing down her medicine. “Harriet, do you know the date for which Ursula’s wedding is fixed?”
“Thursday month,” curtly answered Harriet, who just now hated the fortunate bride with unreasoning envy—an envy that wrung tears from the lonely girl at night.
“What day of the month?” persisted Mevrouw, wearily.
“It’s the twenty-third.”
“Harriet, you must go across to the doctor’s for me. I can’t have him here again just yet; his coming vexes your uncle so. You must say to him—listen—word for word; you must say, ‘Aunt bids me ask: Will uncle be able to go to the wedding-feast on the sixteenth of next month?’ Just that. And you must bring back an answer—yes or no. Go along.”
“But the wedding is on the twenty-third,” protested Harriet, sulkily. “And besides, Uncle Mopius isn’t ill.”
“Yes he is,” replied the invalid, with guilty incisiveness. “You just go and do as you’re told, and come back with the answer immediate. Harriet, if you don’t say a word about it down-stairs—you’d only make your uncle nervous—I’ll give you my Florentine brooch, the mosaic of the two doves drinking. Now hurry away.”
Thus incited, Harriet sulked off through the stolid streets. If Mevrouw Mopius did not send a note to the physician, it was not only that she felt physically and autographically inadequate, but also because she confidently believed that Harriet would in any case have broken the seal.
The messenger soon reached her destination. A maid-servant admitted her into the young doctor’s private room. He was at luncheon.
“My aunt sends me to you on a fool’s errand,” she began, abruptly. “This is her literal message: ‘There’s a wedding-feast on the sixteenth’—which there isn’t—‘will Uncle Mopius be able to go?’” She hung her head with affected accentuation of the indifference she was really feeling.