“Dear, I thought of asking you for that,” she said timidly, “but, you see, nurses are ill to deal with in a wee house like this where there’s no servant.  If I had sickened for it myself where would we all have been?  Worse than in the hospital.”  Of course she had been wise; it was her constant quality.  He shook with rage at the thought of the extreme poverty of the poor, whom the world pretends are robbed only of luxury but who are denied such necessities as the right to watch beside the beloved sick.  “But I’ve been reckless!” she boasted with a smile.  “I’ve told them to put her in a private ward.  She was so pleased!  She was six weeks in the general ward when she had typhoid, and it was dreadful, all the women from the Canongate and the Pleasance....”  It brought painful tears to his eyes to hear this queen, who ought to have had first call on the world’s riches, rejoicing because by a stroke of good fortune her mother need not lie in her sickness side by side with women of the slums.  “Oh, my dear, I’m so glad I can look after you!” he muttered, and gathered her closely to him.

“Oh dear, and me in my dressing-gown!” she breathed.

“You look very beautiful.”

“I wasn’t thinking of beauty; I was thinking of decency.”

“Nobody would call a dressing-gown of grey flannel fastened at the neck with a large horn button anything but decent.”

“Yes, it’s cairtainly sober,” said Ellen placidly.  “Beauty, indeed!  I’m past thinking of beauty, after having been up all night giving mother her medicine and encouraging her, and getting her ready in the morning for the ambulance, and going away over to the doctor at Church Hill for my injection this afternoon.  I fear to think what I’m looking like, though doubtless it would do me good to know.”

“You must be tired out.  Run along to bed.  I’ll go away now and come back the first thing in the morning.”

“Who’s talking of bed?” she complained with a smiling peevishness.  ("Ye’ve got—­ye’ve got remarkable eyebrows.  The way they grow makes me feel all—­all desperate.”) “I’ve had a lie-down since four.  You woke me up with your knocking.  Dear, I’ve never been woken up so beautifully before.  Now I want my supper.  I never lose my appetite even when the Liberals win a by-election, which considering the way our women work against them is one of those things that disprove all idea of a just Providence.  Dear, but it’ll be such a poor supper to set before you!  There’s not a thing in the house but a tin of salmon.  It is a mercy that mother isn’t here, for this is the kind of thing that upsets her terribly.  She wakes me up sometimes dreaming of the time the milk was sour when Mr. Kelman came on his parish visit, though that’s five years ago now.  Oh, Richard, mother is such a wee sensitive thing, you cannot think!  I cannot bear her to be ill!  But indeed she is not very ill.  The doctor said she was not very ill.  He said I would be a fule to worry.  She would be at me for letting you stand out in the hall like this.  You go into the parlour.  I’ll light the fire, and then I’ll away to the kitchen and get the supper.  We must just make the best of it, and I have heard that some people prefer tinned salmon to fresh.”