Chapter XVIII: A Dire Mistake

"RIDICULOUS fuss and nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Cragg. "Never saw anything like it!"

The doctor had taken his departure minutes later than Pattie, and Cragg had into the room. Dot lay with wistful watching the door through which Pattie disappeared. Mrs. Cragg jerked her chair.

"Absurd rubbish! Just when I've no end of things to see to. But it's Pattie all over!"

"What's the matter now?" asked Cragg mildly. "Where is Pattie, did you say?"

"I didn't say she was anywhere, Cragg!"

"But she must, of course, be—somewhere. Is anything the matter?"

"Matter enough; as you'd know if you hadn't got your head in the clouds, as usual. Here am I, tied hand and foot, just for nothing in the world, but because Pattie chooses to go grumbling about herself to Mr. May he says she's to go out for a walk. Wanting a walk at this time of day! I never heard such nonsense!"

"Pattie did look white this morning," observed Cragg.

"She didn't more than usual. Pattie always is a washed-out creature. It don't make a grain of difference whether she's out-of-doors or in, for the matter of that."

"At any rate, if the doctor says it—"

"Oh, if the doctor says Putworth mustn't eat anything except green cheese, it'll have to do it, I suppose! I've no notion of that sort of thing. Mr. May don't know everything, after all; and he's easy taken in by a designing girl."

"You don't call Pattie—"

"I call Pattie what she is, Mr. Cragg."

"And all these weeks she has been slaving here—"

Mrs. Cragg broke into the half-spoken sentence:

"Slaving, indeed! Who gives Pattie board and lodging, I'd like to know? What would become of her if it wasn't for us, Mr. Cragg?"

"My dear, there are two sides to that question. You would not find a professional nurse giving you her services for board and lodging. If Pattie is not a professional nurse, the doctor says she is as good a nurse as can be had without the training. And both he and the nurse say she has done more for Dot than either of them."

"Dadda!" murmured Dot, clinging to his hand, as he sat beside her.

"Dear little Dot!—But you see, don't you?"

"I see that Pattie manages to get the upper hand of you men somehow! I'm sick and tired to death of hearing of nothing but Pattie's goodness. If she'd condescend to be bad for once, I could put up with her better."

"You would probably be the first to blame her," rejoined Cragg, aware how useless it was to answer his wife, yet for once unable to resist doing so. "There are bad people in plenty. We need a few more good ones."

"Wants own darling Pattie!" murmured Dot.

"There you go again! Will you hold your tongue, Dot, and not talk in that ridiculous way?"

Dot's eyes grew large, and filled with tears.

"My dear, think of Dot's state. You must not make her cry," urged Cragg anxiously. "She is not used of late to be spoken to in such a tone."

"Wants—Pattie!" sobbed Dot brokenly.

"Yes, yes, dear; Pattie will soon come back," said Cragg, stooping over her. "Don't you mind, little one. It's all right. Pattie's only gone for a walk, and she will soon be here. Don't cry, Dot. Ma-ma didn't mean anything unkind. I've got to go to business now, but I shall soon look in again."

Dot clutched at him, casting glances of evident shrinking towards Mrs. Cragg.

"Dadda—stay! Dadda—not go!"

"But I must, dear. I've got somebody waiting now to see me. Just for a little while, and then I'll look in again. And Pattie will come back. And Dot will be good, won't Dot?"

Cragg went off with a heavy heart, feeling little doubt that his absence was better than his presence at that moment. Mrs. Cragg, left to herself, would no doubt do what lay in her power for the child. So long as he remained, she would go on showing temper.

Dot sobbed quietly, half under the bedclothes, and Mrs. Cragg sat in moody silence. Then she began to grow uneasy. She did not wish Pattie to come back and to find Dot in tears. It would be an admission of failure on her part. So she moved to the chair which Cragg had vacated, and said in a tone meant to be encouraging:

"Come now, Dot, you needn't be a little goose."

Dot shrank from her. That movement went home. With all Mrs. Cragg's faults, she did love her child.

"Come, Dot; don't be cross."

"I not doss! Ma-ma doss."

Another pause.

"Come, don't be silly. What do you want to do? How do you like to be amused?"

"Wants darling own Pattie!"

"But you can't have Pattie. Not till Pattie chooses to come. She's gone off to amuse herself. You've got to put up with me, so you may as well be good-tempered about it. What's this book? Shall I read to you?"

Dot, becoming aware of the position of affairs, determined to make the most of her opportunity. Tears stopped, and she studied Mrs. Cragg from a fresh point of view.

"Ma-ma tell a tory," was the result of these observations.

"I don't know any stories."

Another break.

"Ma-ma tell a tory," came again.

Mrs. Cragg actually started off in an attempt at compliance.

"Well, once upon a time," she said, "there was a man, and he went out for a walk. He had to go and see his—oh, his grandmother. And he took some nice new-laid eggs for her, and he—he thought he'd see—"

Mrs. Cragg broke down.

"Thought he'd see—" repeated Dot encouragingly.

"Thought he'd see if he couldn't get his sister to go with him."

Another pause.

"And did hims sister go?"

"Well, no, I don't think she did." Pause again.

"That's a toopid tory," said Dot calmly. "Pattie tells oh such lovely, lovely tories."

Mrs. Cragg did not like to be compared with Pattie.

"Seems to me Pattie does every single thing right in your opinion, Dot."

Dot's look was of assent.

Mrs. Cragg had exhausted her powers of invention, and the "tory" advanced no further. Dot, not finding it of interest, did not ask more. She lay silent, her eyes roving, on the watch for Pattie. Mrs. Cragg fidgeted about the room, gazed out of the window, and walked to the table, where she found a slip of paper fastened to the pin-cushion. On the slip was written, "Dot's medicine—at half-past eleven, half-past three, and half-past six."

"Why, it's over the time," she said. "Pattie seems in no hurry to come back. Where does she keep your medicine?" Mrs. Cragg was glad to escape any more "tory-telling."

Dot's little finger pointed vaguely towards the mantelshelf. Mrs. Cragg walked thither, not noting that Dot's finger was now directed towards the cupboard.

"Ah, here's the bottle," she muttered, as she took up one with eight divisions into doses marked upon it. "What queer-looking stuff! That's Mr. May's concern, not mine. I don't believe Dot needs such a lot of medicine." She carried bottle and glass to the small table near the bed.

"I not like it," declared Dot. "Nor I won't take it till Pattie tomes."

"Nonsense! You'll take it, of course, if I give it to you. You've got to be a good girl." Mrs. Cragg was out of patience with Pattie's admirers.

She had seen the nurse administer Dot's medicine, and had once poured out a dose herself, the nurse standing by, so she felt secure as to quantities. Besides, the bottle was marked into doses. The liquid did not look as she would have expected from her recollections; but Dot's medicine had been once or twice changed, and Mrs. Cragg's mind was too much bent in another direction to allow of her noting details. She was growing annoyed with the length of Pattie's absence.

The door opened to admit—not Pattie, as at first Mrs. Cragg hoped, but the untidy maid-of-all-work.

"Mrs. Smithers wants to see yer," she announced.

"What a bother, and Pattie not come back! Well, tell Mrs. Smithers to come into the passage. I can't leave the child, and if I have her in the room, somebody is sure to say it's bad for Dot."

Mrs. Cragg had poured out the dose, and she put it on the little table, going outside the open door. Mrs. Smithers came briskly up.

"I haven't got a moment to spare," she said; "but I want you to come along presently. I've got something to tell you. There's going to be that flower-show next week, and I mean to get a new bonnet, and you ought too. And we'll settle to go together."

"Yes, I know; I've heard about it. I'd like to go with you."

"Well, how soon can you come?"

"As soon as ever I can get away. Pattie's gone out—such nonsense, this time of day!—and I'm shut up here. The child's past everything, with her whims and fancies. Pattie and Cragg do their best to spoil her. But I shan't stop one minute longer than I have to."

"I met Pattie walking along—going off to enjoy herself. As pert as could be."

"Shouldn't wonder!"

"Seemed to make out that she was doing all the work of nursing Dot, and was so useful she couldn't be spared. If I was you, I'd take care and not let her get the upper hand in this house. You'll live to repent it some day, see if you don't."

"She shan't have the upper hand with my will."

"Well, you just come along to me as soon as ever you can. While Pattie is living on you and your husband, you'd best make use of her. I can tell you, I gave her a bit of my mind, and she didn't like it—not at all. I told her it wasn't likely you'd want her father's daughter to have much to do with Dot. You should just have seen how she looked. There's Dot beginning to cry. You'll have to go back to her."

Mrs. Cragg did go back, not in the best of humours. It was with an annoyed jerk that she took up the medicine-glass.

"What a silly child you are to be always crying!" she said impatiently. "I wish you would have some sense. You must take your medicine now. Pattie doesn't mean to get back yet, it's easy to see."

"I not going to, till Pattie tomes," sobbed Dot.

That aroused Mrs. Cragg's opposition. She gave no second look towards the bottle, but brought the glass to the bedside, and held it ready.

"Now, Dot."

"No, no!" shrieked Dot.

Mrs. Cragg laid a hand on Dot's shoulder, and Dot buried her face in the pillow.

"No, no, no, no!" she cried loudly.

Mrs. Cragg endeavoured to lift Dot up, and to force the edge of the glass between her clenched teeth. Dot struggled and screamed, and wrenched herself away. Mrs. Cragg by this time was really angry, ascribing Dot's resistance to Pattie's influence. She took firm grip of the child, and again did her best to pour the liquid through those fast-shut teeth. Dot fought hard.

This was the moment when Pattie ran in. She heard the child's cries, and saw Mrs. Cragg's excited face. Then her glance fell upon the bottle which stood on the small table, and in one terrible moment the truth flashed upon Pattie. It was a moment that she never afterwards forgot.

For the bottle bore a label with a word upon it, which Mrs. Cragg in her disgraceful carelessness had failed to notice. That word was— "LAUDANUM."