n't help longin' for a choice, mum. We ain't
all hands and knees."

"Better for you if you was," said the widow. "It's tongues, you're to
remember, you're not to be. Now come you up after me--and you'll not
utter a word. You'll stand behind the door to do what I tell you. You're
a soldier's daughter, Susan, and haven't a claim to be excitable."

"My mother was given to faints," Susan protested on behalf of her
possible weakness.

"You may peep." Thus Mrs. Boulby tossed a sop to her frail woman's
nature.

But for her having been appeased by the sagacious accordance of this
privilege, the maid would never have endured to hear Robert's voice in
agony, and to think that it was really Robert, the beloved of Warbeach,
who had come to harm. Her apprehensions not being so lively as her
mistress's, by reason of her love being smaller, she was more terrified
than comforted by Robert's jokes during the process of washing off the
blood, cutting the hair from the wound, bandaging and binding up the
head.

His levity seemed ghastly; and his refusal upon any persuasion to see a
doctor quite heathenish, and a sign of one foredoomed.

She believed that his arm was broken, and smarted with wrath at her
mistress for so easily taking his word to the contrary. More than all,
his abjuration of brandy now when it would do him good to take
it, struck her as an instance of that masculine insanity in the
comprehension of which all women must learn to fortify themselves. There
was much whispering in the room, inarticulate to her, before Mrs. Boulby
came out; enjoining a rigorous silence, and stating that the patient
would drink nothing but tea.

"He begged," she said half to herself, "to have the window blinds up
in the morning, if the sun wasn't strong, for him to look on our river
opening down to the ships."

"That looks as if he meant to live," Susan remarked.

"He!" cried the widow, "it's Robert Eccles. He'd stand on his last
inch."

"Would he, now!" ejaculated Susan, marvelling at him, with no question
as to what footing that might be.

"Leastways," the widow hastened to add, "if he thought it was only
devils against him. I've heard him say, 'It's a fool that holds out
against God, and a coward as gives in to the devil;' and there's my
Robert painted by his own hand."

"But don't that bring him to this so often, Mum?" Susan ruefully
inquired, joining teapot and kettle.

"I do believe he's protected," said the widow.

With