"Very well, but I know you are busy, so go home and send me your daughter; she can attend upon me; besides, gospa Markovic will soon be here."
The midwife hesitated.
"Go," said Milena; "I'll feel quieter if you go."
"But you must promise me to keep very quiet, and not to attempt, on any account, to get up."
"Certainly," said Milena; "the doctor said I was not to rise; why should I disobey him? Besides, where have I to go?"
The midwife, after having tucked her patient carefully in bed and made her as cosy as she could, went off, saying that her daughter would soon come to her.
Milena, with anxious eyes and a beating heart, watched the midwife, and, at last, saw her go away and close the door after her. She waited for some time to see that she did not return; then she gathered up all her strength, and tried to rise.
It was, however, a far more difficult task than she had expected, for she fancied that she had fallen from the top of a high mountain into a chasm beneath, and that every bone in her body had been broken to splinters. If she had been crushed under horses' hoofs, she could not have felt a greater soreness all over her body. Still, rise she would, and she managed to crawl slowly out of her bed.
Her legs, at first, could hardly hold her up; the nerves and muscles had lost all their strength, she fancied the bones had got limp; her back, especially, seemed to be gnawed by hungry dogs.
Having managed to get over her first fit of faintness, she, holding on to the bed and against the wall, succeeded in dragging herself towards the table and dropped into a chair.