Having helped her landlady into bed, she ran down-stairs to try and appease the indignant lodgers, who protested, and with truth, that they had rung, rung, rung, and no one answered the bell; that they wanted tea, that Miss Webster had undertaken to wait on them, that they were not waited on, and that accordingly they would seek other lodgings on the morrow, they would, &c., &c.  “Miss Webster, ma’am, is very ill to-night.  She has a young careless servant girl, and is, I assure you, very much distressed that you should be put out thus.  I will bring up your tea, ma’am, in five minutes, if you will allow me.  It is very disagreeable for you, but I am sure if you could see the poor woman, ma’am, you would pity her.”  Mrs. Harmer did pity her only from Emilie’s simple account of her state, and declared she was very sorry she had seemed angry, but the girl did not say her mistress was ill, only that she was lying down, which appeared very disrespectful and inattentive, when they had been waiting two hours for tea.

The shop was by this time cleared up, and Lucy was able to attend to the lodgers.  Whilst Emilie having applied the rags soaked in the lotion which had arrived, proceeded to get Miss Webster a warm and neatly served cup of tea.

It would have been very cheering to hear a pleasant “thank you;” but Miss Webster received all these attentions with stiff and almost silent displeasure.  Do not blame her too severely, a hard struggle was going on; but the law of kindness is at work, and it will not fail.

CHAPTER SEVENTH.

BETTER THINGS.

“Ah, if Miss Schomberg had asked me to wait on her, how gladly would I have done it, night after night, day after day, and should have thought myself well paid with a smile; but to sit up all night with a person, who cares no more for me, than I for her, and that is nothing! and then to have to get down to-morrow and attend to the shop, all the same as if I had slept well, is no joke.  Oh, dear me! how sleepy I am, two o’clock!  I was to change those rags at two; I really scarcely dare attempt it, she seems so irritable now.”  So soliloquized Lucy, who, kindhearted as she was, could not be expected to take quite so much delight in nursing her cross mistress, who never befriended her, as she would have done a kinder, gentler person; but Lucy read her Bible, and she had been trying, though not so long as Emilie, nor always so successfully it must be owned, to live as though she read it.

“Miss Webster, ma’am, the doctor said those rags were to be changed every two hours.  May I do it for you?  I can’t do it as well as Miss Schomberg, but I will do my very best not to hurt you.”

“I want sleep child,” said Miss Webster, “I want sleep, leave me alone.”

“You can’t sleep in such pain, ma’am,” said poor Lucy, quite at her wits ends.

“Don’t you think, I must know that as well as you?  There! there’s that rush light gone out, and you never put any water in the tin; a pretty nurse you make, now I shall have that smell in my nose all night.  You must have set it in a draught.  What business has a rush light to go out in a couple of hours?  I wonder.”