Chapter VI: Two Nurses

BETSY SIMMONS did not return home on leaving the Humphreys' cottage. This was the weekly half-holiday in Banks, and all shops were closed early, including her own. So, having plenty of time at her disposal, she passed along the other side of the road, and stopped before the front door of "Old Meadow."

Bell-pulling was useless there. Mrs. Simmons tried her hand at it, but, as she expected, the crazy wire yielded feebly, and brought no response. After a minute's waiting, she pushed open the door and entered.

Nobody was visible. Mrs. Simmons deposited her umbrella in a corner, gave her boots a good rubbing on the mat,—for the heavy rain of the storm had left mud,—and peered cautiously into the parlour.

Isaac Meads sat there alone, his head dropping forward on his chest in sleepy style, and his lower jaw falling with its wonted unhappiness of expression. Mrs. Simmons drew back, not feeling as if she cared to have speech with the old man. But a second impulse came over her, and she stepped forward. He looked so lonely and miserable; might he not be in need of a kind word?

"Good evening to you, Mr. Meads," she said, in her full pleasant tones. "I've come to ask how your little girl is." Mrs. Simmons herself was so large a person that she always thought of Daisy as a "little girl," and in a time of illness such thoughts naturally find expression in words.

Isaac Meads woke up very slowly out of his fit of drowsiness, and stared blankly at his visitor.

"Is your little girl any better by this time?" asked Mrs. Simmons, pitching her voice higher. She never could quite understand whether his slowness of understanding sprang from stupidity or deafness. "I haven't been able to get her out of my mind all day, poor little dear, and I'm sure I couldn't rest without hearing how she is before night."

"She hadn't got no business to go and get struck with lightning," growled Isaac Meads, enough awake to bring out the uppermost ideas in his feeble old mind. "It's an awful expense—doctor and nurse and all! It's just awful; and I was a-thinking I wouldn't put up no longer with having a girl. It would have been a saving."

"Why, you don't mean to say—," began Mrs. Simmons.

Then she stopped, and stood looking at him, her clear strong sense coming to the conclusion that the old man was crazy. So he was, with the craziness of money greed.

"Somebody'd ought to have seen after her," said Isaac Meads. "It's all along of them school feasts. She shan't go to none of them again."

"She isn't like to go anywhere yet awhile, judging by all accounts," said Betsy Simmons, her womanly indignation mastering other sensations. "Doctor and nurse an expense! Well, I never! What's your money good for, if it isn't to be spent on her? Isn't she your own flesh and blood,—the only thing you have got belonging to you, and the sweetest girl as ever was? I never! If that's all you've got to say about the matter, I'm ashamed of you, Mr. Meads—downright ashamed. Why didn't you go to the school feast yourself to see after her? Wasn't everybody else in the same danger—least-ways, except for the pitchfork? Why, dear me, do you think trouble is never to come to you, as well as to other people?"

Whether or no Isaac Meads took in the sense of Mrs. Simmons' eager words may be doubted. His lack-lustre eyes did not wander from her face; but when she paused there was only a low and renewed mutter about "expense."

"You've got a nurse," said Mrs. Simmons shortly.

"She's come. I didn't get her," said Isaac, with something of energy. "It wasn't my doing, and she's nought to me. She was my servant once, but she isn't now. It wasn't none of my doing."

"It don't seem half as if you counted Miss Daisy to be your own," said Betsy Simmons. "Not much good asking of you how she is. I'd best go and see for myself."

Without more ado Mrs. Simmons quitted the parlour, and went straight across to the little back room where she knew Daisy Meads slept.

It was a sunshiny room on a summer evening, and the blinds were partially lowered, so as to lessen the glare. But the sun was near his setting, and some warm red rays crept in below those frail and aged blinds, to fall upon Daisy's white face.

She was lying quite quietly, and with no sign of suffering about her, except in the occasional twitchings round the mouth. Mary Davis stood beside the bed, looking earnestly, when Mrs. Simmons entered; and neither woman showed surprise at the sight of the other.

"I'm come to see if I can be of use," Mrs. Simmons said. "Poor little dear! It's bad, isn't it, Mrs. Davis? And she don't come round yet?"

"She's opened her eyes twice," Mary Davis answered; "but she don't seem to know nothing nor nobody. The doctor says the mischief isn't in the sight. He thought at first it might be that."

"Then that's something to be thankful for—if it isn't a worse mischief," said Mrs. Simmons. "She don't seem in pain neither."

Mary Davis shook her head, not quite assuringly. "No, but she do moan if I try to move her, or make her take something. It just goes to my heart."

"Well, look here," said Betsy Simmons, after a pause, "I'm just over the way, Mrs. Davis, and I'm ready to help. It isn't that I'm anxious to do much for old Mr. Meads, but Miss Daisy's given me many a smile and kind word since first she came to this place, and I'd do anything I could for her, poor little dear! Maybe she'll be well again in a day or two, and maybe she won't. Seems to me the 'won't' is more likely than the 'will.' But there's no knowing. And you can't be in this room always, and never get out."

"I don't mind for that," Mary Davis answered. "But the day after to-morrow is visiting-day at the hospital, and it would be a fret to me if I couldn't get there for a sight of my husband."

"To be sure you must; and you shall too. That's easy managed," said Mrs. Simmons. "Most part of my business is done before three, and after that my little maid'll keep shop for me while I come here. She's a handy girl, and I can trust her right and left. I've often left her in charge for an hour. I'll do it now, and I'll come and take your place. So you be easy in your mind, and don't you worry. How did it all come about, Mrs. Davis? I've heard a dozen tales, more or less, and I don't see how they can all be true."

Mary Davis in subdued tones described the scene at the school feast, tears coming into her eyes as she spoke of Daisy's brave attempt to save her husband from the effects of his own rashness. "She knew the danger, Mrs. Simmons, though we didn't, and yet she never thought of herself. But that's her all over, and it always was. It seems queer that lightning should take to one thing more than another, but Mr. Bennet says so it is. He says any manner of iron or steel touching us is dangerous in a storm, and he's known a lady's hand hurt from having a needle in her fingers. To be sure there's the lightning conductor on the Church, but I didn't think of that before. Mr. Bennet says my husband was just making a lightning conductor of himself. It's a pity folks can't learn more of such things when they are young. But Miss Daisy was always so quick to take in and remember, even when she was but a mite of a child."

"Yes; you've known Miss Daisy before?" Mrs. Simmons said, in an inquiring tone.