"Shall I take him away, m'm?" Mrs. Mossop asked--("And prepare his winding-sheet," her tone seemed to add).
"Yes, do," Dorothy replied, with a glance at Ruth's blackened hands. "And please make yourself fit to be seen, Ruth. You know you oughtn't to be doing all that on the very day I let Norah out."
She knew that her rebuke had set Ruth up in the melancholy enjoyment of resentment for half a week, but she was past caring. Ruth rose an inch in height at being chidden for the faithful performance of her most disagreeable duties; she turned; and as she bore the Bits away the mighty roar into which Jackie broke diminished in volume down the passage.
Dorothy sighed, that all her troubles should thus crowd on her at once. Her eyes fell again on the tradesmen's books. It hardly seemed worth while to pay them, since they would only come in again next week, as clamourous and urgent as ever. They were thrust through the letterbox like letters; Dorothy knew very well the thud with which they fell on the floor; but she could never help running out into the hall when they came. She had tried the plan of dispensing with books altogether and paying for everything in cash as she got it, but that had merely meant, not one large worry a week, but harassing little ones all the week through.
Oh, why had she squandered, or allowed Stan to squander, those good round sovereigns of Hallowell and Smith's!----
Still--there is measure in everything--she had not sent her pass-book to the bank in order to learn whether she had a balance. That would have been too awful. It was the amount of her margin that she wanted, and feared, to know. For presently there would be the doctor to pay, and so many guineas a week at the Nursing Home, and the flat going on just the same, and poor old Stan pathetically hoping that a casual dinner-table puff in a Marlborough voice would result in fat new ledger-accounts for Fortune and Brooks' and magnificent commissions for himself. If only she could get just a little ahead of her points! But the money went out just slightly quicker than it came in. Stan carved it as it were in twopences off the cold beef, the Bits swallowed it in pennorths with their breadcrumbs and gravy, and directly the strain eased for a little, down swooped the rent and set everything back again exactly where it had been three months before.