"No, no. Not _your_ lesson, miss. I didn't mean that. It's not for you to fret yourself, though I must say---- I have always made it a habit, though without prying, please God, to be aware of more than interference could set right. Fanny and I have talked the affair over till we couldn't look in each other's faces for fear of what we might say. But she's _Mr_ Bowater's child, through and through, and my firm hand was not firm enough, maybe. You did what you could. It's not in human conscience to ask more than the natural frame can bear."
Did what I could.... I cowered, staring at my knuckles, and it seemed that a little concourse of strangers, heads close together, were talking in my mind. My eyes were dry; I think the spectre of a smile had dragged up my lips. Mrs Bowater raised herself in her bed, and peered over at me.
"It's the letters," she whispered at me. "If he hasn't destroyed them, they'll be read to the whole parish."
I crouched lower. "You'll be thankful to be rid of me. I shall be thankful to be rid of myself, Mrs Bowater."
She thrust a long, skinny arm clean out of the bed. "Come away, there; come away," she cried.
"Oh," I said, "take me away, take me away. I can't bear it, Mrs Bowater. I don't _want_ to be alive."
"There, miss, rest now, and think no more." She smoothed my hair, clucked a little low, whistling tune, as if for lullaby. "Why, there now," she muttered sardonically, "you might almost suppose I had been a mother myself!"
There was silence between us for a while, then, quietly raising herself, she looked down at me on the pillow, and, finding me to be still awake, a long smile spread over her face: "Why, we don't seem neither of us to be much good at daytime sleeping."
A morning or two afterwards we set out on our homeward journey--the sea curdling softly into foam on its stones, a solitary ship in the distance on its dim, blue horizon. We were a dejected pair of travellers, keeping each a solemn face turned aside at the window, thinking our thoughts, and avoiding, as far as we could, any interchange of looks that might betray them one to the other. For the first time in our friendship Mrs Bowater was a little short and impatient with me over difficulties and inconveniences which I could not avoid, owing to my size.