"Some one wants you very much," said Lord Hemsworth. "Poor Miss Tempest.
And she has no maid with her. She is not fit to be left to herself.
Won't you go and see to her, Mitty?"
But Mitty shook her head.
"He may ask for me," she said.
"I will stay here and come for you the first minute he asks," said Lord
Hemsworth, moving the rejected warming-pan, and sitting down beside her
on the hot settee. "Poor Miss Tempest! And she tried so hard to save
him. Won't you go to her? She has only Miss Fane with her."
"Miss Fane!" said Mitty, evidently with the recollection of a
long-standing feud. "Much good she'd do a body; doesn't know chalk from
cheese. She didn't even know when Master John had got the measles,
though the spots was out all over him. 'It's only nettle-rash, nurse,'
she says to me. And the same when he had them little ulsters in his
throat. Miss Fane indeed!"
And after a little more persuasion Mitty consented to go if he promised
to come for her if John asked for her.
Lord Hemsworth gave a sigh of relief as Mitty went reluctantly away. He
was in mortal anxiety about Di. He had a nervous misgiving, increased by
his feeling of masculine helplessness to do anything further for her,
lest she should fall ill or faint alone in that gaily lighted room; for,
of course, Miss Fane would not have remained. As, indeed, was the case.
She was yawning herself out of the room when Mitty appeared.
"That's it--that's it," she said, evidently relieved. "Get to bed, Di.
No use sitting up. We shall hear in the morning;" and she departed to
her own room.
Di turned her white exhausted face slowly towards the old woman, and
vainly tried to frame a question. Mitty's maternal instinct was aroused
by the sight of her lamb's "Miss Dinah" sitting in her mist-damped
clothes, which steamed where the warmth of the fire reached them. She
had made no effort to take off her walking things, but she was passive
under Mitty's hands, as the latter unfastened them and wrapped her in
her warm dressing-gown.
"I can't go to bed, Mitty," said Di, hoarsely, holding her gown. "Don't
make me. Let me come and sit in the nursery with you. We shall be nearer
there, and then I shall hear. There is no one to come and tell me
here."
The girl clung convulsively to the old woman, and the two went together
to the nursery, and Mitty, after putting her guest into the
rocking-chair by the fire, went down once more to ask for news. But
there was no news. John was still unconscious, and the doctor would say
nothing. Presently Mitty came tearfully back, and sat down on the other
side of the fire. Lord Hemsworth, who was sitting up with Archie, had
promised to come to the nursery the moment there was any change.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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