“I think that will do,” she murmured.  “Trust him to find a way out of a fix, and we’re in a fix now, if there ever was one.  Drat the dogs!  If it wasn’t for them I could get on myself.”

Mrs. Sharpe was not a rapid scribe.  It had taken her a considerable while to write this, and the household was astir.  She folded it up in the smallest possible dimensions, and wedged it into her thimble.

“A brass thimble makes a good, strong envelope,” said the nurse, with a grim smile.  “And now to begin my day’s work.”

She quitted her own apartment and went into that of her charge.  Mollie was still asleep—­sleeping like a babe, with lips apart, and cheeks softly flushed, and loose, golden hair falling in burnished masses over the pillow.  Involuntarily Mrs. Sharpe paused.

“She looks like a picture,” she thought.  “No wonder he’s crazy in love.”

The sound of the opening door awoke the light sleeper.  She rose up on her elbow and stared around.  The nurse advanced with a propitiatory smile.

“Good-morning, miss,” she said, cheerfully.  “I hope you had a nice sleep.”

“Oh, is it you?” said Mollie.  “I was dreaming I was back home with guardy, and Sir Roger, and poor Hugh, and here I am still.  Oh!” in a voice of bitter anguish, “why did you awake me?”

“My poor dear,” said the nurse, touched, “I didn’t know, you know, or I wouldn’t.  There! don’t think about it now, but get up, like a good girl, and wash and dress yourself, and have your breakfast comfortable.  Things won’t be always like this, you know.”

Mollie looked wistfully at her, but Mrs. Sharpe wasn’t going to commit herself, with no certainty but that listening ears were at the door.

She assisted the poor prisoner with her toilet, combed out and curled the beautiful, abundant hair, and made her as pretty as a picture.

“She’s lost her rosy cheeks, and is failed away to nothing,” mused the nurse.  “Only for that, she’d be the loveliest thing the sun shines on.”

“And now you’re fixed, my pretty dear,” said Mrs. Sharpe, “I’ll go down and get your breakfast.  Nobody ever feels right in the morning on an empty stomach.”

Down in the kitchen, Mrs. Sharpe found things in a lively state of preparation—­coffee boiling, steak broiling, toast making, and muffins baking.  Old Sally, in a state threatening spontaneous combustion, bent over the fire, and Mrs. Oleander, in her rocking-chair, superintended.

“Are you only getting up now?” asked the doctor’s mother, suspiciously.

“Been up these two hours, ma’am,” responded Mrs. Sharpe.  “I tidied up myself and my room, and then tidied up Miss Dane and her’n.  I came down to fetch up her breakfast.”

“It’s all ready,” said Sally.  “Fetch along your tray.”

So Susan Sharpe fetched along her tray, and received a bountiful supply of coffee and toast, and steak and muffins.