‘Why doesn’t Bridget stop here and look after you?’

Nelly laughed.  ‘Because she has much more interesting things to do!’

‘That’s most unlikely!  Have you been alone all the week?’

‘Yes, but quite busy, thank you—­and quite well.’  ‘You don’t look it,’ he repeated gravely, after a moment.

‘So busy, and so well,’ she insisted, ’that even I can’t find excuses for idling here much longer.’

He gave a perceptible start.  ’What does that mean?  What are you going to do?’

’I don’t know.  But I think’—­she eyed him uneasily—­’hospital work of some kind.’

He shook his head.

‘I wouldn’t take you in my hospital!  You’d knock up in a week.’

‘You’re quite, quite mistaken,’ she said, eagerly.  ’I can wash dishes and plates now as well as anyone.  Hester told me the other day of a small hospital managed by a friend of hers—­where they want a parlour-maid.  I could do that capitally.’

‘Where is it?’ he asked, after a moment.

She hesitated, and at last said evasively—­

‘In Surrey somewhere—­I think.’

He took up the tongs, and deliberately put the fire together, in silence.  At last he said—­

’I thought you promised Cicely and me that you wouldn’t attempt anything of the kind?’

‘Not till I was fit.’  Her voice trembled a little.  ’But now I am—­quite fit.’

‘You should let your friends judge that for you,’ he said gently.

‘No, no, I can’t.  I must judge for myself.’  She spoke with growing agitation.  ’You have been so awfully, awfully good to me!—­and now’—­she bent forward and laid a pleading hand on his arm—­’now you must be good to me in another way I you must let me go.  I brood here too much.  I want not to think—­I am so tired of myself.  Let me go and think about other people—­drudge a little—­and slave a little!  Let me—­it will do me good!’

His face altered perceptibly during this appeal.  When he first came in, fresh from the frosty air, his fair hair and beard flaming in the firelight, his eyes all pleasure, he had seemed the embodiment of whatever is lusty and vigorous in life—­an overwhelming presence in the little cottage room.  But he had many subtler aspects.  And as he listened to her, the Viking, the demi-god, disappeared.

‘And what about those—­to whom it will do harm?’

‘Oh no, it won’t do harm—­to anybody,’ she faltered.

’It will do the greatest harm!’—­he laid a sharp emphasis on the words.  ’Isn’t it worth while to be just the joy and inspiration of those who can work hard—­so that they go away from you, renewed like eagles?  Cicely and I come—­we tell you our troubles—­our worries—­our failures, and our successes.  We couldn’t tell them to anyone else.  But you sit here; and you’re so gentle and so wise—­you see things so clearly, just because you’re not in the crowd, not in the rough and tumble—­that we go away—­bucked up!—­and run our shows the better for our hours with you.  Why must women be always bustling and hurrying, and all of them doing the same things?  If you only knew the blessing it is to find someone with a little leisure just to feel, and think!—­just to listen to what one has to say.  You know I am always bursting with things to say!’