"Then go thy ways to my house as fast as thy feet will carry thee, and bring Sarah Evans back here, if she's with her aunt when thou gets there. If she isn't, tell my wife she must come, for somebody is badly wanted at Adam Livesey's."
Tom's fears lent swiftness to his feet, and when he reached the house, he could hardly deliver his message for want of breath.
Sarah was with her aunt, but knowing what had happened at Rutherford's, she had quietly made ready to go and offer her services to Mrs. Livesey, without waiting to be asked.
"Maybe she'll have got a neighbour in, Sarah," said Mrs. Evans, when the girl told her she was going to do what she could for Margaret. "She has behaved none so well to you. I don't forget how you went to the house before, and set Mrs. Livesey free to go straight away to her mother, and how you toiled and moiled with her tribe of little ones all those weeks, doing for them as well as she did in some ways, and better in others. And when they got to love you, poor things, as was only natural when you made their home happy and bright, she gave you the cold shoulder, and drove you right away from the house."
"Don't say 'drove,' aunt," replied Sarah; "there was no driving."
"You mightn't call it driving, my lass, but it was the same thing. Margaret Livesey thanked you and praised you, and gave you a necktie, and would have given you a bit of extra money too if you'd have taken it. Those things were all very nice in their way, but it wasn't very nice for you to go to the house a few days after, with your heart full of loving-kindness towards those children, and to feel that you weren't wanted under the roof where you had done your best for everybody, as in God's sight. And Mrs. Livesey knew it, but she couldn't bear for the little things to be made bright and happy by anybody but herself, though, owing to her sharp ways, she often made them glad to get out of her sight."
"We are not all alike, aunt," replied Sarah, the flush on her face showing, however, that the words went home. "I'm not beyond owning that I felt a bit hurt when Mrs. Livesey let me know, without words, that she only looked on me as a girl that had been a sort of stop-gap in the house, and that now my work was done I was not to think I had a settled place there. But after all, you know she said I had filled the gap well, and that hits been a pleasant thing to think of ever since."
"I think I should wait till she asked me, before I went near her again," said Mrs. Evans.
"Maybe I should too, if all were well with her," replied Sarah. "But I cannot wait now. I shall go, and if I can be of any use I shall stay. It isn't likely Mrs. Livesey can have the heart to work, when her mind will be full of poor Adam. He will be away from home till he gets a turn round, that's certain, and she will want to go to him whenever she's allowed in at the hospital."
"Aye, with all her little sharp ways she dotes on Adam and the children. She'll feel every pain he has to suffer as if it were her own. Still, I think I should let her send for me if she wanted me," persisted Mrs. Evans.