He had been out early in the keen brief frost. The bridge of his high nose was ruddy, his eyes shone. There was about him the intolerant aggravating air of the person who gets up and goes out while others sleep. He seemed hungry—a trifle cross.
“I saw you through the window,” he said curtly, giving her a bluff little nod, and approaching as if to kiss her—the calm kiss that she imagined she wanted from his mouth. “Haven’t they got breakfast ready? Will you make the coffee, Pamela? The way you used to make it; nobody does it so well.”
“Yes, yes!—but look! But what is the matter with her, Jethro? Is it a fit?”
She pointed to Gainah, stiff, staring, widely smiling; a terrified grin that had petrified on her wrinkled mouth. He looked. He gave a long, high whistle, then he seemed terribly touched.
“Aunt Sophy’s been afraid of this,” he said gravely. “We must get her up to bed.”
He picked the rigid figure up tenderly, as he would have picked up an ailing child.
Pamela followed him. On the way through the kitchen she told the maids to send two messengers—one to Turle, another to Liddleshorn for Egbert.
Jethro was halfway up the stairs, the odd figure bunched up like a short-coated baby in his long arms. It looked so ludicrous, so fearsome, that Pamela stepped back from the fixed eyes and stretched mouth. He went slowly, his hands gripped round the blue gown. He paused on the landing; paused by the window, with its tiny dull panes, its wide ledge, on which stood a jar of white honesty-pods—“money in both pockets,” as Gainah had always called it. Pamela slid by him, keeping her skirt, her head and hands from contact with the blue gown and hanging arms. She flung back the door of her old room.
“Carry her in here,” she said. “It is nearer. It is a better room than her own, too. When the doctor comes—I have sent for Egbert—the room must be tidy.”
He crossed the threshold; she ran in front and flung back the curtains, letting in the glad November sun.