Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/69

65 hand gently on her black hair. "If it's as bad as this. I'm sorry for it—more than ever sorry to-night."

"Why, Jim?" She looked up at him with a sudden glance of alarm. "Why, Jim? Is anything the matter?"

"Not much, lass; but I don't think I'm quite the thing to-night." His head drooped as he spoke. The girl put it on her shoulder, and it lay there as if he had scarcely power to lift it up again.

"Grandmother, he's ill—he's ill! why didn't you tell me this before? Is that gentleman the doctor?" she asked, looking at Jabez, who still stood in the shadow of the doorway, watching the scene within.

"No; but I'll fetch the doctor, if you like," said that benevolent personage, who appeared to take a wonderful interest in this family group.

"Do, sir, if you will be so good," said the girl imploringly; "he's very ill, I'm sure. Jim, look up, and tell us what's the matter?"

The man lifted his heavy eyelids with an effort, and looked up with bloodshot eyes into her face. No, no! Never could he fathom the depth of this love which looks down at him now with more than a mother's tenderness, with more than a sister's devotion, with more than a wife's self-abnegation. This love, which knows no change, which would shelter him in those entwining arms a thief or a murderer, and which could hold him no dearer were he a king upon a throne.

Jabez North goes for a doctor, and returns presently with a gentleman, who, on seeing Jim the labourer, pronounces that he had better go to bed at once; "for," as he whispers to the old woman, "he's got rheumatic fever, and got it pretty sharp, too."

The girl they call Sillikens bursts out crying on hearing this announcement, but soon chokes down her tears—(as tears are wont to be choked down in Blind Peter, whose inhabitants have little time for weeping)—and sets to work to get ready a poor apology for a bed—a worn-out mattress and a thin patch-work counterpane; and on this they lay the bundle of aching bones known to Blind Peter as Jim Lomax.

The girl receives the doctor's directions, promises to fetch some medicine from his surgery in a few minutes, and then kneels down by the sick man.

"O Jim, dear Jim," she says, "keep a good heart, for the sake of those who love you."

She might have said for the sake of her who loves you, for it never surely was the lot of any man, from my lord the marquis to Jim the labourer, to be twice in his life loved as this man was loved by her.