“Poor thing!” she said pitifully, and hesitated once more. Then she said brusquely to herself:
“Well, at the worst, if she dies, it can be washed, and she can be buried in it as she wished.”
She shut the drawer, it was a bottom drawer, with her foot. Gainah’s quilts, the blue one still unfinished, were folded carefully away.
When she went back she found the cook and washerwoman standing by the bed. The former had brought clean sheets, the latter was standing stolidly, her crinkled hands on her hips. She sent them all away and finished Gainah’s toilet herself. She fancied that the helpless figure shrank from the touch of her hands; fancied that the eyes tried eloquently and quite in vain to say things which the lips could not.
When the bed was made and Gainah was stretched straight and stiff and robed in snow-white linen of the very finest, Pamela tidied the room. She picked up the old woman’s garments with a “finicky,” fine air of distaste. She twisted together strips of flannel and rolled up stockings which had been frugally re-footed. Last of all she plunged her hand into the pocket of the dim blue gown and brought out the heavy bunch of housekeeping keys. The clinking sound they made roused Gainah. She tried piteously to move in the bed.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
“THAT head-flannel may do for Annie; you know there is to be another little one about Lady Day. I must say that it is a pity when young wives have a family too fast.”
Mrs. Turle gently laved her ample hands in the fancy-work box, apportioning the different articles according to her mind.
“Nancy would like that embroidered newspaper rack. She and Duncan are so very literary. I’m sure Nancy would have distinguished herself in literature, if it had been necessary. She would have made her mark—ladies take up so many things nowadays, and are received by the best people just the same. When Nancy stayed with the Cluttons she moved in a very literary set, and was much admired.”