"Poor gentleman!" I heard her say to Sarah Ann; "he is very violent to-day. I saw he were worse the moment I clapped eyes on him. Sarah Ann, I shouldn't wonder though we had to hold him down yet."
About an hour afterwards she came in to ask me if I "had come more round to myself," and when I merely turned round
on the sofa for reply, she said, in a loud whisper to Sarah Ann, that I "were as quiet as a lamb now." Then she stroked me and went away.
So attentive was my landlady that she was a ministering angel. Yet I lay on that sofa plotting how to get her out of the room. The plan that seemed the simplest was to pretend sleep, but it was not easily carried out. Not getting any answer from me, she would approach on tiptoe and lean over the sofa, listening to hear me breathe. Convinced that I was still living, she and Sarah Ann began a conversation in whispers, of which I or the deceased husband was the subject. The husband had slept a good deal, too, and it wasn't a healthy sign.
"It isn't a good sign," whispered my landlady, "though them as know no better might think it is. It shows he's getting weaker. When they takes to sleeping in the day-time, it's only because they don't have the strength to keep awake."
"Oh, missus!" Sarah Ann would say.
"Better face facts, Sarah Ann," replied my landlady.
In the end I had generally to sit up and confess that I heard what they were saying. My landlady evidently thought this another bad sign.
I discovered that my landlady held receptions in another room, where visitors came who referred to me as her "trial." When she thought me distinctly worse, she put on her bonnet and went out to disseminate the sad news. It was on one of these occasions that Sarah Ann, who had been left in charge of the children, came to me with a serious request.
"Them children," she said, "want awful to see you, and I sort of promised to bring 'em in, if so you didn't mind."