Miss Gregory shook her head. "The lower classes are getting worse and worse," she observed. She put a chair by the door, which stood a little ajar, and looked about her.
"As you are going away you won't want this china." It was his ewer and wash-hand basin. "I don't see anything better, and it'll make a smash, at any rate."
"What you goin' to do, ma'am?" asked the man on the bed.
"Watch," she bade him. It was not easy, but with care she managed to poise the basin and the ewer in it on top of the door, so that it leaned on the lintel and must fall as soon as the door was pushed wider.
"Now," she said, when it was done, "let's have a look at that cut."
It was an ugly gash high in the back, to the left of the spine—a bungler's or a coward's attempt at the terrible heart-stab. Miss Gregory, examining it carefully, was of opinion that she could have done it better; it had bled copiously, but she judged it not to be dangerous. She washed it and made a bandage for it out of a couple of the patient's shirts, and he found himself a good deal more comfortable. He lay back on his bed with some of the color restored to his face, and watched her as she moved here and there about the room with eyes that were trustful and slavish.
"Well," said Miss Gregory, when she had completed an examination of the apartment, "there doesn't seem to be much more one can do. They'll come back, I suppose? But of course they will. How much money have you got about you?"
"About two thousand pounds, ma'am," he said, meekly.
"H'm!" Miss Gregory thought a moment. "And they know it? Of course." She added her little sharp nod of certainty. "Well, when they come we'll attend to them."
There was a tiny mirror hanging from a nail, and she went to it, patted her grey hair to neatness, and re-established her felt hat on top of it. The place was as still as the grave; no noise reached it from without. The one candle at the bedside threw her shadow monstrously up the wall; while she fumbled with her hatpins it pictured a looming giantess brandishing weapons.