"Let me get you something."
"Anything—I am so hungry."
What should she do? She had spent her daily shilling. But to-morrow she would be sure of a dinner: to-morrow's pittance should go to this starving man.
Her poet was starving! That awful cry, going up hourly from the heart of the Great City, had never come home to Madge Barberry before. True, the horror had sometimes seemed imminent in her own life, but her brave hands, made desperate by love, had always kept it at bay. For the sake of her dead mother, who had been spared this martyrdom, she must save Paul Vespan. Quick as thought, she ran downstairs and knocked at the kitchen door. Mrs. Xerxes came out, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Deary me, Miss Barberry, whatever's the matter?"
"Will you come upstairs, Mrs. Xerxes? Mr. Vespan has fainted outside his door. He looks very ill. Perhaps he's hungry. Would you take this and buy what he wants until—until he gets better?"
"I always said you were the lady born, Miss Barberry," observed Mrs. Xerxes, looking down at the silver coin which Madge had pressed into her grimy hand; "but I don't know that I ought to take this from you. What would Mr. Vespan say?"
"Please, please don't tell him," cried poor Madge, in an agony of apprehension. "Let him think it's you."
III.
Madge went to her work next morning at nine, after a sleepless night. Mrs. Xerxes stopped her on the stairs to whisper that Mr. Vespan was much better. He had begged her to say to Miss Barberry that he hoped he had not frightened her, and to thank her for her kindness.