Page:Sons and Lovers, 1913, Lawrence.djvu/408

396 Then they both laughed together like two conspiring children. On top of all their horror flickered this little sanity.

Nurse did not come that night to settle Mrs. Morel down. Paul went up with the hot milk in a feeding-cup. It was nine o’clock.

She was reared up in bed, and he put the feeding-cup between her lips that he would have died to save from any hurt. She took a sip, then put the spout of the cup away and looked at him with her dark, wondering eyes. He looked at her.

“Oh, it is bitter, Paul!” she said, making a little grimace.

“It’s a new sleeping draught the doctor gave me for you,” he said. “He thought it wouldn’t leave you in such a state in the morning.”

“And I hope it won’t,” she said, like a child.

She drank some more of the milk.

“But it is horrid!” she said.

He saw her frail fingers over the cup, her lips making a little move.

“I know—I tasted it,” he said. “But I’ll give you some clean milk afterwards.”

“I think so,” she said, and she went on with the draught. She was obedient to him like a child. He wondered if she knew. He saw her poor wasted throat moving as she drank with difficulty. Then he ran downstairs for more milk. There were no grains in the bottom of the cup.

“Has she had it?” whispered Annie.

“Yes—and she said it was bitter.”

“Oh!” laughed Annie, putting her under lip between her teeth.

“And I told her it was a new draught. Where’s that milk?”

They both went upstairs.

“I wonder why nurse didn’t come to settle me down?” complained the mother, like a child, wistfully.

“She said she was going to a concert, my love,” replied Annie.

“Did she?”

They were silent a minute. Mrs. Morel gulped the little clean milk.

“Annie, that draught was horrid!” she said plaintively.

“Was it, my love? Well, never mind.”

The mother sighed again with weariness. Her pulse was very irregular.