“You will find a brick, sir, holding the pantry door open. Put it in the fire to heat.”
John Gore did as she bade him, while she reached for the chain with an iron crook and slung the kettle on it.
“There be the tongs, sir. I’ll wrap the thing in a bit of flannel and put it to the child’s feet. Poor, dear young thing—lady, I mean, sir. Mercy o’ me, her shoes are wet and almost froze!”
She knelt down and stripped off the shoes and stockings, and began chafing the little feet, admiring them in her blunt, frank way, and calling them the feet of a lady of quality. She had noticed the marks on Barbara’s neck, and John Gore, seeing her eyes fixed there, nodded grimly and put a hand to his throat. His eyes held Mrs. Winnie’s, and she understood the need for silence.
John Gore brought it out with the tongs, and Chris Jennifer’s wife patted it into a piece of flannel and set Barbara’s feet upon it with a smile of satisfaction.
“Now for some hot toddy, sir.” And she went away to mix it.
John Gore bent over Barbara and touched her cheek, for a faint color was creeping back, and he felt that even Mrs. Winnie might be kissed at such a moment. But being a quiet man, he went out to see to his horse, hardly noticing that his own feet were still like frozen clay and that his arms were stiff from carrying his love.
There was a brave breakfast cooking, and the fire was a red, shimmering slope of wood ash when Mr. Jennifer came stumping down the stairs to pause and stare in astonishment at Barbara as he opened the stairway door. She was lying back in the chair with her eyes open, but with no real soul in them as yet, her hands hanging over the chair-rail, her black hair bathing her face.
Mr. Jennifer came in softly and discreetly, and stood about three yards from her, fingering the side seam of his breeches. Then he made a bob and waited, and then a second bob, with a stolid, persistent desire to be proper in the matter of politeness. But though Barbara hardly had sight or hearing for anything as yet, Mr. Jennifer stood stolidly to his convictions, and scraped his feet to make the lady look at him.
Mrs. Winnie caught him at this bobbing and scraping, with a puzzled stare in his eyes and his thick head full of kindness. He glanced at his wife with extreme cunning, and gave her a whisper behind his hands.