Emilie inquired for her mistress, but the words were scarcely out of her lips, than she said, “Oh, Miss, she’s so bad!  She has scalt her foot, and is quite laid up, and the lodgers are very angry.  They say they don’t get properly attended to and so they mean to go.  Dear me, there is such a commotion, but her foot is very had, poor thing, and I have to mind the shop, or I would wait upon her more; and the girl is very inattentive and saucy, so that I don’t see what we are to do.  Will you go and see Miss Webster, Miss?”

Emilie cheerfully consented, leaving Edith with Lucy to learn straw plaiting, if she liked, and to listen to her artless talk.  Lucy had less veneration for the name of Queen Victoria than for that of Schomberg.  Emilie was to her the very perfection of human nature, and accordingly she sang her praises loud and long.

On the sofa, the very sofa for which M. Schomberg had so longed, lay Miss Webster, the expression of her face manifesting the greatest pain.  The servant girl had just brought up her mistress’s tea, a cold, slopped, miserable looking mess.  A slice of thick bread and butter, half soaked in the spilled beverage, was on a plate, and that a dirty one; and the tray which held the meal was offered to the poor sick woman so carelessly, that the contents were nearly shot into her lap.  It was easy to see that love formed no part of Betsey’s service of her mistress, and that she rendered every attention grudgingly and ill.  Emilie went up cordially to Miss Webster, and was not prepared for the repulsive reception with which she met.  She wondered what she could have said or done, except, indeed, in the refusal of the instrument, and that was atoned for.  Emilie might have known, however, that nothing makes our manners so distant and cold to another, as the knowledge that we have injured or offended him.  Miss Webster, in receiving Emilie’s advances, truly was experiencing the truth of the scripture saying, that coals of fire should be heaped on her head.

Poor Miss Webster!  “There! set down the tray, you may go, and don’t let me see you in that filthy cap again, not fit to be touched with a pair of tongs; and don’t go up to Mrs. Newson in that slipshod fashion, don’t Betsey; and when you have taken up tea come here, I have an errand for you to go.  Shut the door gently.  Oh, dear! dear, these servants!”

This was so continually the lament of Miss Webster, that Emilie would not have noticed it, but that she appeared so miserable, and she therefore kindly said, “I am afraid Betsey does not wait on you nicely, Miss Webster, she is so very young.  I had no idea of this accident, how did it happen?”

How it happened took Miss Webster some time to tell.  It happened in no very unusual manner, and the effect was a scalt foot, which she forthwith shewed Miss Schomberg.  There was no doubt that it was a very bad foot, and Emilie saw that it needed a good nurse more than a good doctor.  Mr. Parker was a medical man, and Emilie knew she should have no difficulty in obtaining that kind of assistance for her.  But the nursing!  Miss Webster was feverish and uneasy, and in such suffering that something must be done.  At the sight of her pain all was forgotten, but that she was a fellow-creature, helpless and forsaken, and that she must be helped.