As for her tending Nettie without assistance, Dr. Girvan’s medical sense had told him any such proceeding was impracticable, quite as soon as Grace’s common sense had told her the same thing.
Without going through the ceremony of consulting him, Miss Moffat had despatched a messenger for her own little maid, mentioned once before in these pages.
“I want you to help me nurse Mrs. Brady, who is ill with FEVER,” she wrote. “If you are afraid, do not come.”
Back with the messenger, bundle in hand, came Nancy, trim and pretty as ever, radiant with delight at seeing her former mistress once more.
“What did your mother say, Nancy?” asked Grace, looking at the bright young face not without a certain feeling of remorse for having brought it to a house where death might be lurking for its owner.
“Say, Miss—nothing, to be sure; wasn’t I coming to you!”
Miss Moffat walked to the window and back again, thinking in what form of words to tell the girl what she wanted with her.
“Nancy,” she began, “if it had been only to nurse Mrs. Brady I required help, I would never have asked you to help me. Plenty of women older and more experienced than you could have been found for such a duty, but what I really require is a person whom I can trust to keep silence. I want you to promise me that to no human being now or hereafter—unless I give you leave—you will ever mention a word of what you may hear in Mrs. Brady’s room.”
“I’ll be true to you, Miss Grace, what you bid me I will do; it’s my right and my pleasure too.”
Nancy had not been ten minutes installed in the sick room before Susan asked to speak a word with Miss Moffat.