But she had a morbid dislike of any betrayal of sentiment. To her such betrayal betokened “foolishness,” and so all she said was, “There’s no need to make a fuss! I only turned over a little queer. I never was right off, Daisy.”
Pettishly she pushed away the glass in which Bunting had hurriedly poured a little brandy. “I wouldn’t touch such stuff—no, not if I was dying!” she exclaimed.
Putting out a languid hand, she pulled herself up, with the help of the table, on to her feet. “Go down again to the kitchen, child”; but there was a sob, a kind of tremor in her voice.
“You haven’t been eating properly, Ellen—that’s what’s the matter with you,” said Bunting suddenly. “Now I come to think of it, you haven’t eat half enough these last two days. I always did say—in old days many a time I telled you—that a woman couldn’t live on air. But there, you never believed me!”
Daisy stood looking from one to the other, a shadow over her bright, pretty face. “I’d no idea you’d had such a bad time, father,” she said feelingly. “Why didn’t you let me know about it? I might have got something out of Old Aunt.”
“We didn’t want anything of that sort,” said her stepmother hastily. “But of course—well, I expect I’m still feeling the worry now. I don’t seem able to forget it. Those days of waiting, of—of—” she restrained herself; another moment and the word “starving” would have left her lips.
“But everything’s all right now,” said Bunting eagerly, “all right, thanks to Mr. Sleuth, that is.”
“Yes,” repeated his wife, in a low, strange tone of voice. “Yes, we’re all right now, and as you say, Bunting, it’s all along of Mr. Sleuth.”
She walked across to a chair and sat down on it. “I’m just a little tottery still,” she muttered.
And Daisy, looking at her, turned to her father and said in a whisper, but not so low but that Mrs. Bunting heard her, “Don’t you think Ellen ought to see a doctor, father? He might give her something that would pull her round.”