It was as Lucilla had said. Vera was rigid. She looked up at Everard with a smile of satisfaction at that fact. "What do you think of me now?" it seemed to ask. "Am I the sort of woman to turn your back on, and neglect?—a woman who at once becomes as stiff as a broomstick?"
"She must be got upstairs and undressed," the doctor said to Barett.
"Lean on me and try to walk," Barett implored the patient.
She gave a defiant smile. "If my life depended on it I could not move a toe," she said.
"If I took her head, and you her feet?" Everard suggested to the doctor—a plan at once negatived by Vera.
"I won't be carried in that fashion," she said. "I am not a long woman, like Luce," she added. "Fred carries me with perfect ease."
"I think you can manage it, Mr Barett," the doctor said.
There was no help for it. Everard stooped to the task. He ought to have been a happy man, perhaps, with that burden in his arms. It was not as such he described himself to his wife afterwards.
Halfway up the stairs he tripped, and she screamed.
"Grip me! Grip me! Don't let me drop over the balusters!" she called.