When she reached the first-floor she said to herself that she might as well take the milk into the kitchen first, and when she reached the kitchen she remembered poor Mrs. Earlforward's bulbs. The precious bulbs had been neglected. Out of kindness to Mrs. Earlforward she went at once and watered the soil in which they were buried, and put the pots out on the window-sill. It was an act of piety, not of faith, for Elsie had no belief in the future of those bulbs. Indeed, she counted them among the inexplicable caprices of employers. If you wanted a plant, why not buy one that you could see, instead of interring an onion in a lot of dirt? Still, for Mrs. Earlforward's sake, she took great pains over the supposed welfare of the bulbs. And yet--it must be admitted, however reluctantly--her motive in so meticulously cherishing the bulbs was by no means pure. She was afraid of the imminent interview with Mr. Earlforward, and was delaying it. If she had been sure of herself in regard to Mr. Earlforward, she would not have spent one second on the bulbs; she would have disdained them utterly.
"I didn't sleep much the first part of the night," he said, "but I must have had some good sleeps this morning."
Elsie thought he was a little better, but he still looked very ill indeed. His pallor was terrible, and his eyes confessed that he knew he was very ill. He was forlorn in the disordered and soiled bed; and the untidy room, with its morsel of dying fire, was forlorn.
"Well," said Elsie nervously, in a tone as if she was repeating a fact with which both of them were familiar, "well, so missis has gone to the hospital!"
She had told him. She trembled for his exclamation and his questions. He made no sound, no movement. Elsie felt extremely uncomfortable. She would have preferred any reply to this silence. She was bound to continue.
"Yes. Missis was that ill that when doctor came for you he took _her_ off instead. I told her I'd see after you properly till you was fetched too, sir." She gave no further details. "I'm that sorry, sir," she said.
Mr. Earlforward maintained his silence. He did not seem to desire any details. He just lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling. The expression on his hollowed face, now the face of a man of seventy, drew tears to Elsie's eyes, and she had difficulty in restraining a sob. The aspect of her employer and of the room, the realization of the emptiness of the rest of the house, the thought of Mrs. Earlforward snatched away into the mysterious and formidable interior of the legendary hospital, were intolerable to Elsie, who horribly surmised that "they" must be cutting up the unconscious form of her once lively and impulsive mistress. To relieve the tension which was overpowering her Elsie began to straighten the rumpled eiderdown.