He made her no answer, but went to look at the coughing boy, who had been in bed for a week with bronchitis.
"You've never been and got in Westall's way again?" she said anxiously. "It's no good my tryin' to get a wink o' sleep when you're out like this."
"Don't you worrit yourself," he said to her, not roughly, but decidedly.
"I'm all right. This boy's bad, Minta."
"Yes, an' I kep' up the fire an' put the spout on the kettle, too." She pointed to the grate and to the thin line of steam, which was doing its powerless best against the arctic cold of the room.
Hurd bent over the boy and tried to put him comfortable. The child, weak and feverish, only began to cry—a hoarse bronchial crying, which threatened to wake the baby. He could not be stopped, so Hurd made haste to take off his own coat and boots, and then lifted the poor soul in his arms.
"You'll be quiet, Will, and go sleep, won't yer, if daddy takes keer on you?"
He wrapped his own coat round the little fellow, and lying down beside his wife, took him on his arm and drew the thin brown blankets over himself and his charge. He himself was warm with exercise, and in a little while the huddling creatures on either side of him were warm too. The quick, panting breath of the boy soon showed that he was asleep. His father, too, sank almost instantly into deep gulfs of sleep. Only the wife—nervous, overdone, and possessed by a thousand fears—lay tossing and wakeful hour after hour, while the still glory of the winter night passed by.
CHAPTER II.
"Well, Marcella, have you and Lady Winterbourne arranged your classes?"
Mrs. Boyce was stooping over a piece of needlework beside a window in the Mellor drawing-room, trying to catch the rapidly failing light. It was one of the last days of December. Marcella had just come in from the village rather early, for they were expecting a visitor to arrive about tea time, and had thrown herself, tired, into a chair near her mother.