Mrs. Watts curtsied. She looked as starved as they did. It seemed she knew me.
“She be very bad. Mr. Ludlow, sir.”
“She seems so. Is it—fever?”
“Law, sir! It’s more famine nor fever. If her strength can last out—why, well and good; she may rally. If it don’t, she’ll go, sir.”
“Ought she not to have things, Mrs. Watts? Beef-tea and wine, and all that.”
Mrs. Watts stared a minute, and then her lips parted with a sickly smile. “I don’t know where she’d get ’em from, sir! Beef-tea and wine! A drop o’ plain tea is a’most more nor us poor can manage to find now. The strike have lasted long, you see, sir. Any way, she’s too weak to take much of anything.”
“If I—if I could bring some beef-tea—or some wine—would it do her good?”
“It might just be the saving of her life, Mr. Ludlow, sir.”
I went galloping home through the snow. Mrs. Todhetley was stoning raisins in the dining-room for the Christmas puddings. Telling her the news in a heap, I sat down to get my breath.