“Haven’t you? If I remember rightly, I heard some one asking to see you only a minute ago. It is a little girl that I have seen carrying milk about somewhere in the Strand.”
“Oh! To be sure, I remember her well. How curious that she should think of me! It is very kind. But she is a good girl; she looks as if she had a gentle heart. I should like her to come up, Doctor.”
“Well, if you will not keep her too long, and not talk too much, she shall come.”
The Doctor turned away, and in a few minutes the little milk-girl was at the patient’s bed-side.
“Well, Mr. Moncello, I’ve come to see you. I would have come before, only they told me you were too bad to know any one. Aunty sends a kind message, and says, If you will make haste and get better, I am to bring you a glass of new milk every day for a fortnight—real milk, sweet and new—that isn’t to be got every day in London, I can tell you.”
The patient lifted the hand of the little girl to his lips, and thanked her with his eyes.
“My little maid,” he said after a pause, “I must not keep you long, nor talk much; but just a few words I should like to say. You came from the country, did you not?”
“Yes!”
“And was it very beautiful there?”
“Oh very! My dear mother’s cottage was in the middle of a garden, and honeysuckle grew over the porch, and birds built under the eaves. I have heard the cuckoo sing there in the spring, and the nightingale, too, in the evening.”