eak to you, and I never
will again, but I must, this once. Janet, _do_ you blame me? Are you
really there? Why do you come this way? You're killing me, you know.
I can't sleep. You shouldn't have taken that strong medicine, and the
doctor told you not to, you know, yourself. Won't you go, Janet? Not
to please Nannie?"

Really, it would have melted a stone to hear her.

She was still a moment and then she began to cry and whimper, and I
knew that it had made no difference.

"She won't go--she won't go," she said, crying, "not even for Nannie!"

Well, I talked to her and read to her and stroked her head, and by two
o'clock or so she was off for an hour, and I got a nap myself. But
from three till nearly five she was awake again, and I had to light up
the room; she said she hardly saw her then--only felt her, and that
wasn't so bad.

I don't know that anything different took place for a week after that.
We went through the same business every night, and I took a nap every
afternoon when she did. She told me, what I wasn't much surprised to
hear, that she and Mr. Ferrau were engaged--or just about--when this
precious Janet died, and that now she wouldn't hear of it and had
refused to marry him till she was well again. And I must say I think
she was right. Of course the old gentleman didn't see it that way, and
we had many a discussion about it, he and I.

"God Almighty, Miss Jessop, my dear," he used to say to me, "you know
as well as I do--I'm speaking, of course, to a woman of practical sense
and experience, and therefore I speak plainly--you know as well as I do
that the day after the wedding all this will be done for! We'll never
hear of that damned Janet nonsense again. Now, would we?"

"Well, Commodore, maybe not, but you can't tell," I'd say. "It's a
good bet, but--it's a bet, after all. It would be awkward if it didn't
work out, you know."

"Oh, bosh, bosh!" he'd burst out, and roll off to the Yacht Club.
People that live in big houses like that, I've noticed, always have to
go out to get a little peace, they say, and privacy. It's funny.

The weather was bad, so we didn't go on the motor trip at all, and that
was just as well, for if we had, I should never have gone up to the
hospital that day and never seen old Margaret. She was an old darky
woman that used to come in to clean the wards when they were short of
help, and all the nurses knew her, because she used to tell fortunes
with car