‘They’ve all left me,’ said Mrs. Bent bitterly. ‘Mrs. Waddy went first. She said I ought to be ashamed of myself for introducing diseases there, and I am sure it wasn’t my fault that little Dora--’
‘How nice!’ cooed Mrs. Hauksbee. ‘The Waddy is an infectious disease herself “more quickly caught than the plague and the taker runs presently mad.” I lived next door to her at the Elysium, three years ago. Now see, you won’t give us the least trouble, and I’ve ornamented all the house with sheets soaked in carbolic. It smells comforting, doesn’t it? Remember I’m always in call, and my ayah’s at your service when yours goes to her meals, and and if you cry I’ll never forgive you.’
Dora Bent occupied her mother’s unprofitable attention through the day and the night. The Doctor called thrice in the twenty-four hours, and the house reeked with the smell of the Condy’s Fluid, chlorine-water, and carbolic acid washes. Mrs. Mallowe kept to her own rooms she considered that she had made sufficient concessions in the cause of humanity and Mrs. Hauksbee was more esteemed by the Doctor as a help in the sick-room than the half-distraught mother.
‘I know nothing of illness,’ said Mrs. Hauksbee to the Doctor. ‘Only tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.’
‘Keep that crazy woman from kissing the child, and let her have as little to do with the nursing as you possibly can,’ said the Doctor; ‘I’d turn her out of the sick-room, but that I honestly believe she’d die of anxiety. She is less than no good, and I depend on you and the ayahs, remember.’
Mrs. Hauksbee accepted the responsibility, though it painted olive hollows under her eyes and forced her to her oldest dresses. Mrs. Bent clung to her with more than childlike faith.
‘I know you’ll make Dora well, won’t you?’ she said at least twenty times a day; and twenty times a day Mrs. Hauksbee answered valiantly, ‘Of course I will.’
But Dora did not improve, and the Doctor seemed to be always in the house.
‘There’s some danger of the thing taking a bad turn,’ he said; ‘I’ll come over between three and four in the morning to-morrow.’
‘Good gracious!’ said Mrs. Hauksbee. ‘He never told me what the turn would be! My education has been horribly neglected; and I have only this foolish mother-woman to fall back upon.’