He bent his handsome head to her and threw on his hat and passed out into the rimy February fog. But he walked slowly, pondering as he went, and his face wore a moody frown. For Lord Walmerston’s influence and weight upon that pressing question, separate accommodation for married soldiers, and Military Schools for the men and their wives and children, was not to be had for nothing, he well knew....
She shut the door, and then the tea-bell rang, and she passed on to the dining-room, and took her place before the capacious tray at the matron’s end of the long, plainly-appointed, wholesomely-furnished table.
She had declined to dine in the society of a Prince because she doubted his motives and disapproved of his character. She played the hostess now to her staff of nurses and probationers, dispensing the household tea from the stout family teapot with a liberal hand, and leading the conversation with a gentle grace and an infectious gayety that drew sparks from the homeliest minds about the board and made bright wits shine brighter.
The Berlin and Paris papers came by Bertham’s servant as she went to her room to prepare, by some hours of rest, for the night-watch by a dying patient. She gave half-an hour of the time to reading the articles and paragraphs Bertham had considerately marked in red ink for her.
When she set about preparing for repose came a gentle knock at her door, and in answer to her soft “Come in!” the gray-haired, olive-skinned, pleasant-faced woman, who had admitted Dunoisse and shown him out again, appeared, saying:
“You never rang, Miss Ada, love, but I made bold to come.”... She added in tones of dismay, “And to find you brushing your beautiful hair yourself when your old Husnuggle’s in the house and asking nothing better than to do it for you!...”
“Thank you, dear!” She surrendered the brush, and sat down and submitted to the deft hands that set about their accustomed task, as though it were soothing to be so ministered to. Even as she said: “For this once, kind Husnuggle, but you must not do it again!”
“Don’t say that, Miss Ada! when night’s the only time of all the livelong day that I get my Wraye Rest talk with you.”
Entreated thus, she reached up a hand and patted the plump matronly cheek of the good soul, and said, with soft, considerate gentleness:
“Let it be so, since it will make you happy. But those who have chosen for their life’s task the duty of serving others should do without service themselves. Try to understand!”