Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/27

 'That's a thing I never could abide!' the little dressmaker exclaimed, with great emphasis and a visible shiver; after which she picked up various scattered remnants of muslin and cut paper and began to roll them together with a desperate and mechanical haste. 'It's quite awful, to know what to do—if you are very sure she is dying.'

'Do you mean she's shamming? we have plenty of that—but we know how to treat 'em.'

'Lord, I suppose so,' murmured Miss Pynsent; while her visitor went on to say that the unfortunate person on whose behalf she had undertaken this solemn pilgrimage might live a week and might live a fortnight, but if she lived a month, would violate (as Mrs. Bowerbank might express herself) every established law of nature, being reduced to skin and bone, with nothing left of her but the main desire to see her child.

'If you're afraid of her talking, it isn't much she'd be able to say. And we shouldn't allow you more than about eight minutes,' Mrs. Bowerbank pursued, in a tone that seemed to refer itself to an iron discipline.

'I'm sure I shouldn't want more; that would be enough to last me many a year,' said Miss Pynsent, accommodatingly. And then she added, with another illumination, 'Don't you think he might throw it up against me that I did take him? People might tell him about her in later years; but if he hadn't seen her he wouldn't be obliged to believe them.'

Mrs. Bowerbank considered this a moment, as if it were rather a super-subtle argument, and then answered, quite in the spirit of her official pessimism, 'There is one thing you may be sure of: whatever you decide to do, as soon as ever