haps if you leave me alone I shall get a bit of sleep.”
They arranged the cushions about her comfortably, and went down-stairs, where a half dispute ensued. Judith reproached Mrs. Gould for her childish cowardice, and that lady retorted that if folks were born timid they couldn’t help themselves. In the midst of it, a great cry came from above, and Judith flew up. Mrs. Gould followed, taking her leisure over it, and met the girl, who had come quickly down again, making for the front door.
“One of the Mr. Greys must be got here, whether or not,” she said in passing; “she’s a great deal worse.”
“But, Judy, look here,” were the arresting words of the widow. “Who’ll be at the responsibility? She says she won’t have the Greys, and I might have to pay them out of my own pocket.”
“Nonsense!” retorted Judith. “I’d not bring up pockets, if I were you, when a fellow-creature’s life is at stake. You go up to her; perhaps you can do that.”
Judith hastened into the street. The two brothers lived in houses contiguous to each other, situated about midway between Mrs. Gould’s and the Red Lion inn. Mr. John, generally called Mr. Grey, occupied the larger house, which contained the surgery and laboratory; Mr. Stephen the smaller one adjoining. Mr. Stephen, the younger, had married when he was only twenty-one, and he now wanted a year or two of forty; Mr. John had more recently married, and had a troop of very young children.
The hall door of Mr. John’s house stood open, and Judith went in, guided by the bright lamp in the fanlight. Too hurried to stand upon ceremony, she crossed the hall and pushed open the surgery door. A handsome, gentlemanly lad of sixteen stood there, pounding drugs with a pestle and mortar. Not perhaps that the face was so handsome in itself, but the exceeding intelligence pervading it, the broad, intellectual forehead, and the honest expression of the large, earnest blue eyes, would have made the beauty of any countenance. He was the son and only child of Mr. Stephen Grey.
“What, is it you, Judith?” he exclaimed, turning his head quickly as she entered. “You come gliding in like a ghost.”
“Because I am in haste, Master Frederick. Are the gentlemen at home?”
“Papa is. Uncle John’s not.”
“I want to see one of them, if you please, sir.”
The boy vaulted off, and returned with Mr. Stephen: a merry-hearted man with a merry and benevolent countenance, who never suffered the spirits of his patients to go down while he could keep them up. A valuable secret in medical treatment.
“Well, Judith? and what’s the demand for you?” he jokingly asked. “Another tooth to be drawn?”
“I’ll tell my errand to yourself, sir, if you please.”
Without waiting to be sent, Frederick Grey retired from the surgery and closed the door. Judith gave an outline of the case she had come upon to Mr. Stephen Grey.
He looked grave; grave for him; and paused a moment when she had ceased.
“Judith, girl, we would prefer not to interfere with Mr. Carlton’s patients. It might appear, look you, as though we grudged him the few he had got together, and would wrest them from him. We wish nothing of the sort: the place is large enough for us all.”
“And what is the poor young lady to do, sir? To die?”
“To die!” echoed Stephen Grey. “Goodness forbid.”
“But she may die, sir, unless you or Mr. Grey can come to her aid. Mr. Carlton can be of no use to her, he is in London.”
Mr. Stephen Grey felt the force of the argument. While Mr. Carlton was in London, the best part of a hundred miles off, he could not be of much use to anybody in South Wennock.
“True, true,” said he, nodding his head. “I’ll go back with you, Judith. Very young, you say? Where’s her husband?”
“Gone travelling abroad, Sir,” replied Judith, somewhat improving upon the information supplied by Mrs. Gould. “Is there no nurse that can be got in, sir?” she continued. “I never saw such a stupid woman as that Mrs. Gould is in illness.”
“Nurse? To be sure. Time enough for that. Frederick,” Mr. Stephen called out to his son, as he crossed the hall, “if your uncle comes in before I am back, tell him I am at Widow Gould’s. A lady who has come to lodge there is taken ill.”
Judith ran on first, and got back before Mr. Stephen. Somewhat to her surprise, she found Mrs. Crane seated at the table, writing.
“You are better, ma'am!”
“No, I am worse. This has come upon me unexpectedly, and I must write to apprize a friend.”
The perspiration induced by pain was running off her as she spoke. She appeared to have written but two or three lines, and was thrusting the letter into an envelope. Mrs. Gould stood by, helplessly rubbing her hands,