UT, Rob," said Mrs. Keating, "you can't deny that it was—well—at least suspicious."
"Pshaw!" replied her husband, with vigor. "Nothing but surmise, anyway. And in any case, she was justified."
"But a murderess!" protested Mrs. Keating. Her husband scowled at the word.
"You women!" he exclaimed. "You are never satisfied. Here you are with an ideal nurse, and you cavil at—at a mere suspicion. You 've forgotten, I suppose, how it was before she came."
Forgotten that time, that awful time before Mollie came? Never in life would Mrs. Keating forget it. Her mind reverted with amazing vividness to the day that was the climax of the awfulness and the end of it. She remembered it and said no more of her suspicions.
She remembered how she had been sitting at the window, where she could watch her three terrifying children playing on the lawn; remembered how dowdy and dreadful she had looked, with her red eyes and her frowzy hair, how worse than dreadful she had felt, how hopeless, how helpless.
The front door had banged, and out came a lean, wooden man, who strode down the garden path, jerked open the gate, dammed it after him, and disappeared in the direction of the railway station. Her husband, in a frightful temper. There had been a scene at the breakfast-table; his tea had been weak and cold, the eggs hard as bullets, the toast revoltingly pale and soft. And the baby, somewhere out of sight, had wailed miserably all the time.
"What's the matter with this breakfast?" Keating had demanded.
"Cook has her hands full," she had explained. "She's taking care of baby, and she does n't know how very well."
"Why the devil don't you get another nurse?"
"But, Rob, I don't know how. I don't know where to look for a really good, trustworthy woman. I'm not used to American ways yet."
Keating had become quite violent.
"You 'll have to find out. It's your business. Your business either to find a nurse or to learn how to keep that child quiet yourself. I will not be bothered with this sort of thing."
She had begun to cry, which helped nothing.
"Oh, Lord!" he shouted. "Can't you do anything but sit there and snivel? Look at this breakfast. Not fit to eat, the house all upset. What's the matter with you, anyway? Simply because a poor old ayah dies, everything goes to pieces."
And so on, until Mrs. Keating had got up and left the table, sobbing. Her husband watched her go, and if it had n't been for her dressing-gown, he would have gone after her. But that outrageous thing of dingy flowered flannel trimmed with purple ribbon, with a long, trailing fold at the back—this garment, combined with her tears and her untidy hair, quite hardened his heart. Of course he realized that it was hard for her after that languid existence in India and the years of utter reliance upon the ayah, but still it did n't do to overlook the fact that he was being made very uncomfortable and that it was n't wifely, was n't decent, of her to allow any such condition.
So, deserted and rebuked, sat Mrs. Keating in her room. She was expected, she well knew, to dust and to make beds, as cook could n't do that and likewise walk unceasingly up and down the nursery with a baby suddenly grown sleepless. But she felt too ill and miserable and too hopeless. The little she could do would n't make any impression upon the dreadful confusion, daily growing worse.
She was thinking something about wishing she had never been born or had never married Rob or had never come to America, when, glancing dutifully at her quite unmanageable children, she observed a stranger in the garden, a sturdy, gray-haired woman, respectably dressed in black, with a voluminous skirt that flounced about her square-toed boots as she walked. She was talking to the children with that manner and that smile recognized at once by Mrs. Keating as being absolutely the proper sort, at once adult and full of authority, without being irritating.
She patted young Robert's head, and went on her way, disappeared round the corner of the house, headed evidently for the back door. No doubt cook admitted her, for presently Mrs. Keating, with some surprise, heard soft-soled boots come squeaking up the stairs, and there stood the stranger in the doorway of her room.
"Good morning, ma'am," she said in a pleasant voice. "Please to excuse me for coming up, but the cook tells me you 're not very well, so I did n't want to trouble you. I heard you wanted a nurse, so I stopped in. I'm a nurse, ma'am, and looking for a proper situation."