“Oh, is that all?” cried Bertha. “The nurse will be here in a fortnight, and Dr. Ramsay says she’s a most reliable woman.”
“I wasn’t thinking of earthly preparations,” said Miss Glover. “I was thinking of the other. Are you quite sure you’re approaching the—the thing, in the right spirit?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“It isn’t what I want you to do. It’s what you ought to do. I’m nobody. But have you thought at all of the spiritual side of it?”
Bertha gave a sigh that was chiefly voluptuous. “I’ve thought that I’m going to have a son, that’s mine and Eddie’s; and I’m awfully thankful.”
“Wouldn’t you like me to read the Bible to you sometimes?”
“Good heavens, you talk as if I were going to die.”
“One can never tell, dear Bertha,” replied Miss Glover, sombrely; “I think you ought to be prepared.... ‘In the midst of life we are in death’—one can never tell what may happen.”
Bertha looked at her somewhat anxiously. She had been forcing herself of late to be cheerful, and had found it necessary to stifle a recurring presentiment of evil fortune. The Vicar’s sister never realised that she was doing everything possible to make Bertha thoroughly unhappy.
“I brought my own Bible with me,” she said. “Do you mind if I read you a chapter?”