"He may ask for me," she said.
"I will stay here and come for you the first minute he asks," said Lord Hemsworth, moving the rejected warming-pan, and sitting down beside her on the hot settee. "Poor Miss Tempest! And she tried so hard to save him. Won't you go to her? She has only Miss Fane with her."
"Miss Fane!" said Mitty, evidently with the recollection of a long-standing feud. "Much good she'd do a body; doesn't know chalk from cheese. She didn't even know when Master John had got the measles, though the spots was out all over him. 'It's only nettle-rash, nurse,' she says to me. And the same when he had them little ulsters in his throat. Miss Fane indeed!"
And after a little more persuasion Mitty consented to go if he promised to come for her if John asked for her.
Lord Hemsworth gave a sigh of relief as Mitty went reluctantly away. He was in mortal anxiety about Di. He had a nervous misgiving, increased by his feeling of masculine helplessness to do anything further for her, lest she should fall ill or faint alone in that gaily lighted room; for, of course, Miss Fane would not have remained. As, indeed, was the case. She was yawning herself out of the room when Mitty appeared.
"That's it—that's it," she said, evidently relieved. "Get to bed, Di. No use sitting up. We shall hear in the morning;" and she departed to her own room.
Di turned her white exhausted face slowly towards the old woman, and vainly tried to frame a question. Mitty's maternal instinct was aroused by the sight of her lamb's "Miss Dinah" sitting in her mist-damped clothes, which steamed where the warmth of the fire reached them. She had made no effort to take off her walking things, but she was passive under Mitty's hands, as the latter unfastened them and wrapped her in her warm dressing-gown.
"I can't go to bed, Mitty," said Di, hoarsely, holding her gown. "Don't make me. Let me come and sit in the nursery with you. We shall be nearer there, and then I shall hear. There is no one to come and tell me here."
The girl clung convulsively to the old woman, and the two went together to the nursery, and Mitty, after putting her guest into the rocking-chair by the fire, went down once more to ask for news. But there was no news. John was still unconscious, and the doctor would say nothing. Presently Mitty came tearfully back, and sat down on the other side of the fire. Lord Hemsworth, who was sitting up with Archie, had promised to come to the nursery the moment there was any change.
The nursery still bore traces of the little party that had broken up so disastrously, for Mitty had invited the élite of the village ladies to view the carnival from the nursery windows. The "rock" buns for which Mitty was celebrated, and one of Mrs. Alcock's best cakes, were still on the table, and Mitty's fluted silver teapot with a little nest of clean cups round it. Presently she got up, and, opening the corner cupboard, began to put them away; but the impulse of tidying was forgotten as she caught sight of John's robin mug on the top shelf. She took it down, and stood holding it in her old withered hands.