"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.