"My figger has always been my strong point, mum, and I'm not goin' to let myself go. Of course, you're thin, mum, so it doesn't matter so much. But people who lets themselves go always has big waists, like the statues in picture galleries. I once went to a show in Whitechapel, and I says to the girl who went along with me 'I'd be downright ashamed if I couldn't show a smaller waist than that Venus.' I expect yours will be pretty big when you gets about again," with which comforting prediction she retired to the lower regions and left me with this pleasing prospect and my own thoughts, which were not of the most cheerful description. It is hard to be told that one is of no use in the world, and to be compared with a black prize Minorca, however good a layer!
CHAPTER X
I DISCOVER THAT DR. RENTON IS IN LOVE
Nurse has gone, and I am not overwhelmed with grief. I could quite see that within another week the kitchen would have been turned into a pugilistic ring, and she and Amelia would have settled their grievances in a fight.
Amelia has said, with her nose in the air, "Seems to think I am just here to wait on her, mum. Nurses halways imagines they're duchesses, and just took to nursin' out of pilanthropy."
And nurse has said kindly, "I don't want to worry you, Mrs. Westover, but probably that girl is here just as a temporary, or I shouldn't speak; but really her impertinence is——"
"She is quite permanent," I have hastened to assure her, at which she too has stuck her nose in the air; and so they have gone about as though the law of gravitation was reversed, and their noses permanently drawn heavenwards.
I am downstairs in the drawing-room. I found awaiting me an invalid couch—an Ilkley—low and luxurious, with soft down cushions cased in silk of a lovely golden hue—a couch contrived to ease the weariness of tired people. They have pushed it into the window, and from here I can see all my friends of the garden—the apple tree best loved of all, for is it not our very own tree, growing on our domain? One has a peculiar affection for one's own possessions. Not that I am anything but grateful to the beech in the frog-pond field for casting its cool shadow across the lawn; but it belongs to somebody else—perhaps some farmer who hardly knows of its existence.
My descent from the upper regions was somewhat perilous. We—Amelia, nurse, and I—wanted to take Dimbie by surprise, so nurse said she would superintend my removal. As a matter of fact, she did nothing of the kind, for Amelia superintended it.