“I am sorry I had to leave you,” she said, going up to Lawrence, “but poor Oliver needed the care of some one besides old Hepsy, and I dare say you have found a competent nurse in Lilian.”
“Yes, Fairy has been very kind,” said Lawrence, taking the young girl’s hand, “I should have been sadly off without her. But what of Oliver?”
Mildred did not then know how severe a shock Oliver had received, and she replied that, “he was very weak, but would, she hoped, be better soon.”
“I shall go down to-morrow and thank him for saving my life,” was Lawrence’s next remark, while Mildred asked some trivial question concerning himself.
“Why in thunder don’t she tell him all about it?” growled the Judge, beginning to grow impatient. “Why don’t she tell him how she worked like an ox, while t’other one sat on the floor and snivelled?” Then as he heard Mildred say that she must go and see which of the negroes would stay with him that night, he continued his mutterings: “Mildred’s a fool,—Thornton’s a fool,—and that Lilian is a consummate fool; but I’ll fix ’em;” and striding into the room, just as Mildred was leaving it, he said, “Gipsy, come back. You needn’t go after a nigger. I’ll stay with Lawrence myself.”
It was in vain that both Lawrence and Mildred remonstrated against it. The Judge was in earnest. “Unless, indeed, you want to watch,” and he turned to Lilian: “You are such a capital nurse,—not a bit afraid of the dark, nor sick folks, you know,” and he chucked her under the chin, while she began to stammer out:
“Oh, I carn’t! I carn’t! it’s too hard,—too hard.”
“Of course, it’s too hard,” said Lawrence, amazed at the Judge’s proposition. “Lilian is too delicate for that; she ought to be in bed this moment, poor child. She’s been sadly tried to-day,” and he looked pityingly at Lilian, who, feeling that in some way wholly unknown to herself, she had been terribly aggrieved, began to cry, and left the room.
“Look out that there don’t something catch you in the hall,” the Judge called after her, shrugging his shoulders, and thinking that not many hours would elapse ere he pretty thoroughly undeceived Lawrence Thornton.
But in this he began to fancy he might be disappointed, for soon after Mildred left them, Lawrence fell away to sleep, resting so quietly that the Judge would not awake him, but sat listening to his loud breathings until he himself grew drowsy. But Lawrence disturbed him, and after a few short nods, he straightened up, exclaiming, “the confoundedest snorer I ever heard. I can hear him with my deaf ear. Just listen, will you!” and he frowned wrathfully at the curtained bed, where lay the unconscious object of his cogitations. “It’s of no use,” he said at last, as he heard the clock strike one. “No use to be sitting here. Nothing short of an earthquake could wake him, and sleep will do him more good than that slush in the cups. I ain’t going to sit up all night either. ‘I carn’t! I carn’t! it’s too hard,—too hard!’ Little fool!” and laughing to himself as he mimicked Lilian, he stalked into the adjoining chamber, and when at sunrise Mildred came in she found the medicines all untouched, and the Judge fairly outdoing Lawrence in the quantity and quality of his snores!