The shop was by this time cleared up, and Lucy was able to attend to the lodgers. Whilst Emilie having applied the rags soaked in the lotion which had arrived, proceeded to get Miss Webster a warm and neatly served cup of tea.
It would have been very cheering to hear a pleasant "thank you;" but Miss Webster received all these attentions with stiff and almost silent displeasure. Do not blame her too severely, a hard struggle was going on; but the law of kindness is at work, and it will not fail.
CHAPTER SEVENTH.
BETTER THINGS.
"Ah, if Miss Schomberg had asked me to wait on her, how gladly would I have done it, night after night, day after day, and should have thought myself well paid with a smile; but to sit up all night with a person, who cares no more for me, than I for her, and that is nothing! and then to have to get down to-morrow and attend to the shop, all the same as if I had slept well, is no joke. Oh, dear me! how sleepy I am, two o'clock! I was to change those rags at two; I really scarcely dare attempt it, she seems so irritable now." So soliloquized Lucy, who, kindhearted as she was, could not be expected to take quite so much delight in nursing her cross mistress, who never befriended her, as she would have done a kinder, gentler person; but Lucy read her Bible, and she had been trying, though not so long as Emilie, nor always so successfully it must be owned, to live as though she read it.
"Miss Webster, ma'am, the doctor said those rags were to be changed every two hours. May I do it for you? I can't do it as well as Miss Schomberg, but I will do my very best not to hurt you."
"I want sleep child," said Miss Webster, "I want sleep, leave me alone."
"You can't sleep in such pain, ma'am," said poor Lucy, quite at her wits ends.