He put out his hand and pressed her on the shoulder, and never said a word. Oh, the doctors! the doctors! Hale men and hearty, we can see their shortcomings and can smile at them, but when the night-light burns among the phials!
It was the eighth day after Kate, with a face of clay, and her sleeves rolled up, and the dough still on her elbows as she had come from the baking-board, burst upon the doctor in his surgery with the cry, “Dr Brash, Dr Brash! ye’re to haste ye and come at once to the wee one!” He had gone as nearly on the wings of the wind as a fat man may in carpet-slippers, and found a distracted family round the fevered child.
“Tut, tut, lassie,” said he, chucking her lightly under the chin. “What new prank is this, to be pretending illness? Or if it’s not a let-on, I’ll be bound it’s MacGlashan’s almond tablet.”
“It’s these cursèd crab-apples in the garden; I’m sure it’s the crab-apples, doctor,” said Miss Bell, looking ten years older than her usual.
“H’m! I think not,” said Dr Brash more gravely, with his finger on the pulse.
“It’s bound to be,” said Bell, piteous at having to give up her only hope. “Didn’t you eat some yesterday, pet, after I told you that you were not for your life to touch them?”
“No,” said Bud, with hot and heavy breathing.
“Then why didn’t ye, why didn’t ye; and then it might have been the apples?” said poor Miss Bell. “You shouldn’t have minded me; I’m aye so domineering.”
“No, you’re not,” said Bud, and wanly smiling.
“Indeed I am; the thing’s acknowledged, and you needn’t deny it,” said her auntie. “I’m desperate domineering to you.”
“Well, I’m—I’m not kicking,” said Bud. It was the last cheerful expression she gave utterance to for many days.
Wanton Wully was not long the only one that morning in the sunny street. Women came out, unusually early, as it seemed, to beat their basses; but the first thing that they did was to look at the front of Daniel Dyce’s house with a kind of terror lest none of the blinds should be up, and Mr Dyce’s old kid glove should be off the knocker. “Have you heard what way she is keeping to-day?” they asked the bell-man.
“Not a cheep!” said he. “I saw Kate sweepin’ out her door-step, but I couldna ask her. That’s the curse of my occupation; I wish to goodness they had another man for the grave-diggin’.”