She felt
that she could not do less than to stand by while the wound he had
received in her service was being attended to. It was Wynne himself who
put her away.
"You are too kind, Miss Morison," he said; "but you are not fit to do
this. I beg that you'll not stay. Your face shows how hard it is for
you."
The first thought that shot through her mind was one of relief that she
now might properly leave her self-inflicted task; the second was a pang
of self-reproach that she should wish to leave it; the third and
lasting was a sense of pleasure that even in his pain he had not failed
to note her face and divine her feelings.
"Mr. Wynne is right," Mrs. Morison added decisively. "Mehitabel can
help me, my dear. Go into the other room and let Rosa get you a cup of
tea."
"It won't be much of a cup of tea," Mehitabel commented grimly. "That
fool of a girl's got it into her head that it's a good time to cry for
her doxy, because he's a brakeman on some other train."
Berenice smiled at the characteristic crispness and the absurd speech
of the old servant. She remembered Mehitabel from the days when in
pinafores she used to visit here, and when she looked upon the tall,
gaunt woman with an awe which was saved from being terror only by the
fact that she had learned to associate with that abrupt speech an
after gift of crisp cakes.
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