"He is very weak. The action of the heart is extremely feeble," said the doctor, when Katherine followed him to the door. "Try and make him take the champagne."
Another day dragged through; then Katherine, rather worn with the constant involuntary sense of watching which had strained her nerves all day, slept soundly and dreamlessly. She woke early next morning, and was soon dressed. Mrs. Knapp reported Mr. Liddell to be still slumbering.
"But law, miss, he have had a bad night--the worst yet, I think. He was dreaming and tossing from side to side, and then he would scream out words I couldn't understand. I made him take some wine between two and three, but I do not think he knew me a bit. I have had a dreadful night of it."
Katherine expressed her sympathy, and did what she could to lighten the good woman's labors.
Mr. Liddell, however, though he looked ghastly, seemed rather stronger than usual. He insisted on getting up, and came into the sitting-room about eleven.
It was a cold morning, with a thick, drizzling rain. Katherine made up the fire to a cheerful glow, and by her uncle's directions placed pen, ink and paper on the small table he always had beside him. Then he uttered the accustomed commanding "Read," and Katherine read.
Suddenly he interrupted her by exclaiming, "Give me the deaths first."
It had been a whim of his latterly to have this lugubrious list read to him every day.
Katherine had hardly commenced when she descried Mr. Newton's well-known figure advancing from the garden gate.
"Ha! that is well," cried her uncle, with shrill exultation. "Now--now all will go right."
The next moment the lawyer was shown in, and having greeted them, proceeded to apologize for his unavoidable absence. "Here I am, however, sir," he concluded, "at your service."
"Go--leave us," said Liddell, abruptly yet not unkindly, to Katherine; then, as she left the room, "Finish the deaths for me, will you, before we go to business. She had just read the first two. Read--make haste!"
Somewhat surprised, Mr. Newton took up the paper and continued: "On the 30th September, at Wimbledon, universally regretted, the Rev. James Johnson, formerly minister of "Little Bethel, Bermondsey." On October 1st, at her residence, Upper Clapton, Esther, relict of Captain Doubleday, late of the E. I. C. Service. On the 2nd instant, at Bournemouth, Peter Fergusson, of Upper Baker Street, in the seventy-fifth year of his age."