“It can’t be so bad! It can’t be really serious,” I cried vehemently. “It was all over in such a second, and we were there at once; everything was done for her! Vere is easily upset, and she feels stiff and strained. I do myself, but she will be better soon, father—they must make her better! She could not bear to be ill.”
He sighed so heavily, poor father, and leant his head against the wall as if he were worn out, body and mind.
“Poor Vere, poor darling! I often wondered how her discipline would come. Pray God it may not be this way; but if it does come thus we must help her through it as bravely as may be. It will be hard for us as well as for her; terribly hard for your mother especially. We shall look to you, Babs, to cheer us up; you are young and lighthearted, and if our fears come true you will have a great work before you.”
But I didn’t feel that I could promise at all. After he had gone I lay thinking it all over and feeling perfectly wretched at the idea of being cheerful under such circumstances. I can be as lively as a grig, (what is a grig, by the way?) when things go smoothly, and other people are cheerful, too, but to keep lively when they are in the depths of woe, and you have to keep things going all by yourself and there is no excitement or variety, is a very different thing. I am quelled at once by sighs, and tears, and solemn faces. It’s my nature, I can’t help it. I’m so sensitive. Miss Bruce once said that that word “sensitive” was often used when “selfish” would be much more applicable. I thought it horrid of her at the time, but I expect, like most hard things, it is true. Now if you didn’t think of yourself at all but only and wholly of others, it would be your one aim through life to make them happy, and no effort would be too difficult if it succeeded in doing that. Then people would talk about you and say you were “the sunshine of the home,” and your parents would bless you with their latest breath, and people who had misjudged you would flock round and sit at your knee, and profit by your example. I should like to be like that. It would be so lovely and so soothing to the feelings.
The doctor came at noon and allowed me to be lifted on to the sofa and wheeled into the next room. It made a change, but it was a very long day, all the same, and I thought the afternoon would never come to an end. Rachel came in and out the room, but could never settle down, for as soon as she sat down, rat-tat came to the door, someone said, “Miss Rachel, please,” and off she flew to do something else.
Mrs Greaves brought some sewing and sat beside me, but she can’t talk, poor dear; she can only make remarks at intervals and sigh between them, and it isn’t cheerful. At tea-time Mr Greaves appeared, and—well, he is a curious creature! I have always been taught that it is mean to accept hospitality, “eat salt,” as the proverb has it, and then speak unkindly of your host, and, of course, I wouldn’t to anyone else, but to you, O diary, I must confess that I’m truly and devoutly thankful he is not my father.
He has a great big face, and a great big voice, and very little manners, and I believe he enjoys, really thoroughly enjoys, bullying other people, and seeing them miserable. He was quite nice to me in the way of sympathising with my foot, and saying that he was pleased to see me; but I felt inclined to shake him when he went on to speak of “The Moat,” and of all we had done that we should not have done, and left undone that we should have done, and of what he would have done in our place; making out, if you please, that the fire was all our fault, and that we deserved it if we were burnt out of house and home!
Rachel poured tea on the troubled waters, and he snubbed her for her pains and called his wife “madam,” and wished to know if she had nothing fit to eat to offer to her guest. There were about ten different things on the table already; it was only rage which kept me from eating, but he chose to pretend that everything was bad, and we had a lively time of it, while he ate some of the cakes on every plate in turns and took a second helping and finished it to the last crumb, and then declared that it wasn’t fit for human consumption. All the while poor Mrs Greaves sat like a mute at a funeral, hanging her head and never saying so much as “Bo!” in self-defence; and Rachel smiled as if she were listening to a string of compliments, and said—
“Try the toast, then, father dear. It is nice and crisp, just as you like it. If you don’t like those cakes, we won’t have them again. Ready for some more tea, dear? It is stronger now that it has stood a little while.”
“It might easily be that. Hot water bewitched—that’s what I call your tea, young lady. Waste of good cream and sugar—”