Signed, sealed and delivered the afore-written day, month and year, in the presence of Witness, MARY WALTERS, [seal.] WILLIAM D'AUBREY, [seal.]
We both signed, and then remembered a witness was necessary. 'I will call Thomas,' said Mary. 'He won't know what we have written.' I bowed with a legal stiffness, and waited. She rang--no response.
She rang again. A loud laughter in the kitchen caused her to say, as usual, 'Oh! they cannot hear the bell,' and she tripped off lightly and called 'Susan! Susan! _Susan!_' 'and but the booming roars replied and fast the talk rolled on.' 'Susan,' said she, gently, over the bannisters.
'Susan is out, marm,' said a granite voice from the second story.
'Don't speak so loud, marm. Johnny has just gone to sleep, and I've had such trouble with him all the evening; he must have caught cold going to dancing school. You know, marm I begged you not to send him.
'Mrs. Phillips,' whispered Mary, in a crushed voice, 'where has Susan gone?'
'She went to her sister's, marm. Her child is very ill with the small pox, and she said she knew, if you knew he might die, that you would let her go and sit up with him this last night, poor, dear soul, bless his heart!'
'Why, Mrs. Phillips, just come down stairs, please; I want to speak to you.--Come into the library, only Mr. D'Aubrey is here.'
(Humph! ONLY Mr. D'Aubrey!--'Oh, for to-morrow!')
Enter Mrs. Phillips, one of those fat, pylygastric nurses, who divide the twenty-four hours into four days, so as to have three meals to each of their diurnal revolutions; whose digestive organs, if they could speak, would strike for wages; whose eyes move but never look; their atmosphere--what Germans might call expression--being that of massive rest.
She slides into the room and immediately sits down, moving her eyes up to her mistress with a patient and slightly suffering expression, while the process of deglutition is slowly going on.
I seize a book, pamphlet, anything, hold it in front of my face, and bite my segar in two.
'Did I understand you to say, Mrs. Phillips, that Susan had gone to sit up with a _small pox_ patient?'
'The boy marm, may not be yours, but it is her _kin_ and she ought to know her duty to a sister's child.'
