She slides into the room and immediately sits down, moving her eyes up to her mistress with a patient and slightly suffering expression, while the process of deglutition is slowly going on.
I seize a book, pamphlet, anything, hold it in front of my face, and bite my segar in two.
'Did I understand you to say, Mrs. Phillips, that Susan had gone to sit up with a small pox patient?'
'Her nephew, yes marm.'
'Oh, how very wrong in her—how—'
'I don't think so, marm.'
I ground my teeth.
'Why Mrs. Phillips?'
'The boy marm, may not be yours, but it is her kin and she ought to know her duty to a sister's child.'
'Yes, but she might bring the disease to my little children! she'—'That's in the hands of Providence, marm.'