Margaret lay quiet for a while; her deep gray eyes were full of tears, her bleached face tremulous with smiles.
"Heaven is taking great care of me, and I have much to be thankful for. Kind John Doane and his wife, for instance."
The bricklayer puffed hard, and slowly spelled out her meaning, and arrived at it with a snort of surprised pleasure.
"Is it Betsy and me that you want to be thankful for? You as is our guarding angel, what made a man of Johnnie as can read most as well as the curate himself. And haven't every one of the nine of us, down to the babby, felt as if we had a angel under the roof for the last three weeks?"
"Have I been three weeks ill?"
"Three weeks, dear miss; seven days of 'em you wasn't in your head at all, and Dr. Ramsey weren't easy about you—weren't easy at all. It were inflammation of the brain."
"And you out of your pittance—you have nursed me through all this?"
"And proud to do it, miss."
"But if I had died, who would make up to you the doctor's bill, or your own ease?"
"Dear miss, don't!" His hard hand went up to wipe the starting tears. "If you had died, it's not us as would stop our mourning to think of the mite you cost us. You ain't like the rest of the Peerage—you comes down to we; you had a heart, so you had, and felt for we, and we never forgets that."