“Oh!” The exclamation was a faint one, but it was an exclamation.  “I hope that means nothing really serious,” Miss Vanderpoel added.  “Everyone will hope so.”

“Yes, miss,” said Mr. Tewson, deftly twisting the string round the package he was tying up for her.  “A sad reward it would be if he lost his life after doing all he has done.  A sad reward!  But there’d be a good deal of sympathy.”

The small package contained trifles of sewing and knitting materials she was going to take to Mrs. Welden, and she held out her hand for it.  She knew she did not smile quite naturally as she said her good-morning to Tewson.  She went out into the pale amber sunshine and stood a few moments, glad to find herself bathed in it again.  She suddenly needed air and light.  “A sad reward!” Sometimes people were not rewarded.  Brave men were shot dead on the battlefield when they were doing brave things; brave physicians and nurses died of the plagues they faithfully wrestled with.  Here were dread and pain confronting her—­Betty Vanderpoel—­and while almost everyone else seemed to have faced them, she was wholly unused to their appalling clutch.  What a life hers had been—­that in looking back over it she should realise that she had never been touched by anything like this before!  There came back to her the look of almost awed wonder in G. Selden’s honest eyes when he said:  “What it must be to be you—­just you!” He had been thinking only of the millions and of the freedom from all everyday anxieties the millions gave.  She smiled faintly as the thought crossed her brain.  The millions!  The rolling up of them year by year, because millions were breeders!  The newspaper stories of them—­the wonder at and belief in their power!  It was all going on just as before, and yet here stood a Vanderpoel in an English village street, of no more worth as far as power to aid herself went than Joe Buttle’s girl with the thick waist and round red cheeks.  Jenny Buttle would have believed that her ladyship’s rich American sister could do anything she chose, open any door, command any presence, sweep aside any obstacle with a wave of her hand.  But of the two, Jenny Buttle’s path would have laid straighter before her.  If she had had “a young man” who had fallen ill she would have been free if his mother had cherished no objection to their “walking out”—­to spend all her spare hours in his cottage, making gruel and poultices, crying until her nose and eyes were red, and pouring forth her hopes and fears to any neighbour who came in or out or hung over the dividing garden hedge.  If the patient died, the deeper her mourning and the louder her sobs at his funeral the more respectable and deserving of sympathy and admiration would Jenny Buttle have been counted.  Her ladyship’s rich American sister had no “young man”; she had not at any time been asked to “walk out.”  Even in the dark days of the fever, each of which had carried thought and action of hers to the scene of trouble, there had reigned unbroken silence, except for the vicar’s notes of warm and appreciative gratitude.