‘Your daughter is very ill, I’m afraid,’ said I.

‘Ay—­she’ll be costin’ me a handful, like her mother did,’ said Pegtop.

‘I hope her room is comfortable, poor thing.’

’Ay, that’s it; she be comfortable enough, I warrant—­more nor I. It be all Meg, and nout o’ Dickon.’

‘When did her illness commence?’ I asked.

‘Day the mare wor shod—­Saturday.  I talked a bit wi’ the workus folk, but they won’t gi’e nout—­dang ’em—­an’ how be I to do’t?  It be all’ays hard bread wi’ Silas, an’ a deal harder now she’ ta’en them pains.  I won’t stan’ it much longer.  Gammon!  If she keeps on that way I’ll just cut.  See how the workus fellahs ‘ill like that!’

‘The Doctor gives his services for nothing,’ I said.

‘An’ does nothin’, bless him! ha, ha.  No more nor that old deaf gammon there that costs me three tizzies a week, and haint worth a h’porth—­no more nor Meg there, that’s making all she can o’ them pains.  They be all a foolin’ o’ me, an’ thinks I don’t know’t.  Hey? we’ll see.’

All this time he was cutting a bit of tobacco into shreds on the window-stone.

‘A workin’ man be same as a hoss; if he baint cared, he can’t work—­’tisn’t in him:’  and with these words, having by this time stuffed his pipe with tobacco, he poked the deaf lady, who was pattering about with her back toward him, rather viciously with the point of his stick, and signed for a light.

‘It baint in him, you can’t get it out o’ ’im, no more nor ye’ll draw smoke out o’ this,’ and he raised his pipe an inch or two, with his thumb on the bowl, ’without backy and fire.  ‘Tisn’t in it.’

‘Maybe I can be of some use?’ I said, thinking.

‘Maybe,’ he rejoined.

By this time he received from the old deaf abigail a flaming roll of brown paper, and, touching his hat to me, he withdrew, lighting his pipe and sending up little white puffs, like the salute of a departing ship.

So he did not care to hear how his daughter was, and had only come here to light his pipe!

Just then the Doctor emerged.

‘We have been waiting to hear how your poor patient is to-day?’ I said.

’Very ill, indeed, and utterly neglected, I fear.  If she were equal to it—­but she’s not—­I think she ought to be removed to the hospital immediately.’

’That poor old woman is quite deaf, and the man is so surly and selfish!  Could you recommend a nurse who would stay here till she’s better?  I will pay her with pleasure, and anything you think might be good for the poor girl.’

So this was settled on the spot.  Doctor Jolks was kind, like most men of his calling, and undertook to send the nurse from Feltram with a few comforts for the patient; and he called Dickon to the yard-gate, and I suppose told him of the arrangement; and Milly and I went to the poor girl’s door and asked, ‘May we come in?’