Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/204

 

The beginning of Bessie's character was a violent one, for she no sooner had the pitiful creature safe in her warm and shabby room than he went entirely to pieces. He began seeing things in her closet, under the bed and coming through the transom above the door. He saw all manner of strange beasts, even to unicorns, which Bessie knew well enough did not exist save on the splendid device of the British Empire. Under the stimulus of delirium the little man developed a superhuman strength which proved very nearly too much even for the stalwart Bessie. But she succeeded at last in binding him into the great double bed, and after rousing another indignant lady dwelling in the same house she secured morphine, which after a time reduced him to a stupor. She managed at last to get an hour's sleep lying beside him lest he should awake and become violent again. In the early morning she gave him some hot milk and when he fell asleep again she put on her hat and coat and set out through the slush for the Pot and Pie.

There she confronted Winterbottom and told him that she was in need of a holiday. He looked at her with a twinkle in his hard eye and asked, "What? Again?"

But Bessie denied his suspicion. She had a cousin, she said, who was ill and in need of care. Otherwise he would be sent to the workhouse and no Cudlip had ever darkened the door of a workhouse.

So Mrs. Winterbottom took Bessie's place at the