Page:The Prussian officer, and other stories, Lawrence, 1914.djvu/115

 “There’s that cabbage—and you'll find the meat in the pantry—and there’s an apple pie you can hot up. But don’t you do it——!”

“Who will, then?” asked Louisa.

“I don’t know,” moaned the sick woman, unable to consider.

Louisa did it. The doctor came and gave serious examination. He looked very grave.

“What is it, doctor?” asked the old lady, looking up at him with old, pathetic eyes in which already hope was dead.

“I think you’ve torn the skin in which a tumour hangs,” he replied.

“Ay!” she murmured, and she turned away.

“You see, she may die any minute—and it may be swaled away,” said the old doctor to Louisa.

The young woman went upstairs again.

“He says the lump may be swaled away, and you may get quite well again,” she said.

“Ay!” murmured the old lady. It did not deceive her. Presently she asked:

“Is there a good fire?”

“I think so,” answered Louisa.

“He’ll want a good fire,” the mother said. Louisa attended to it.

Since the death of Durant, the widow had come to church occasionally, and Louisa had been friendly to her. In the girl’s heart the purpose was fixed. No man had affected her as Alfred Durant had done, and to that she kept. In her heart, she adhered to him. A natural sympathy existed between her and his rather hard, materialistic mother.