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Ah! but such a dear, kind, generous creature . . .
Pray, have I hindered you from doing so?
The afternoon before, an odd thing happened. Mary and Emmy were alone with him, he lying drugged and comatose, and Mary had been fanning him, for it was very warm. Outside, beneath a copper-coloured sky, a scorching north wind blew; the windows of the room were shut against swirling clouds of dust. There was no sound but Johns laboured breathing, and, exhausted, Mary thought she must have dropped into a doze. For when, warned by a kind of instinct she started up, she saw that Johns eyes were open: he was gazing with a glassy stare at the foot-end of the bed. And as she watched, an extraordinary change came over the shrunken, jaundiced face. The eyes widened, the pin-hole pupils dilated; while the poor, burst lips, on which were black sores that would not heal, parted and drew back, disclosing the pallid flesh of the gums. John was trying to smile.
Mahony groaned. It was all very well for Mary to say that, if he wished to be alone, he had only to go into his study and shut the door. He could and did retire there. But, like other doors, this, too, had a handle; and since Mary could never get it into her head that to be busy among your books was to be seriously busy, the petty interruptions he suffered were endless. Take, for example, the case of Louisa Urquhart. This was by no means exhausted with the stitching of a rose in a drab bonnet. Louisa had lived so long in semi-invalid retirement that she was little better than a cretin with regard to the small, practical affairs of life. She did not know how to stamp a letter or tie up a newspaper for the post; could not buy a pair of gloves or cross a crowded street without assistance. They had to accompany her everywhere. She also lived in a perpetual nervous flutter lest some accident should happen at Yarangobilly while she was absent: the house catch fire, or one of the children take a fit. That Willy will not do a bolt with a less dismal party than she, it would be rash indeed to assume! Of all the woebegone wet-blankets . . . Mahony was disgruntled: it spoilt his appetite for breakfast to listen to Louisas whining, did she learn by the morning post that one of her infants had the stomach-ache; or to look on at the heroic efforts made by Mary to disperse the gloom. (The wifes tender patience with the noodles she gathered round her invariably staggered him afresh.) Then parties must needs be given in Louisas honour and the honour of those who came after; the hours for meals disarranged, put backwards or forwards to suit the home habits of the particular guest.
Ah, thank God, the muzzle of medical etiquette is off my jowl!
First, though, he had to hear from Mary the gist of those she had fleetly skimmed, prior to going back and reading them over again, word by word, with a brooding seriousness.
My dear! the minute I set eyes on er, I knew she was a fraud. And I thinks to myself: Just you wait, milady, till the lights go out, and Ill cook your goose for you! Well, sure enough, there we all sat and-in-hand in the dark, like a party of kids playing unt-the-slipper. And by-and-by one and another squeals: Im touched! What do I do, Mary? Why, I gradually work the hand Im olding in me right, closer to me left, till Id got THEM joined and me right and free. (Its as easy as Punch if you know ow to do it.) And when the man next me oh, e WAS a solemn old josser! when e said in a voice that seemed to come from is boots: The spirits ave deigned to touch me as if ed said: God Almighty as arrived and is present! I made one grab, and got old of now what do you think? Im danged if it wasnt er false chignon I found in my hand. I thought she was going to give me the slip then, after all: she wriggled like an eel. But I held on like grim death and, luckily for me, shed a few airs left still clinging to her cranium. She squeals like a pig. Up with the lights, says I; Ive got er! Turn up the lights if you dare, cries she: itll kill me. Over goes a chair in the scrimmage, and then they did turn em up, and there was she squirming on the floor, bald like an egg, with I dont know how many false gloves and feathers and things pinned on to er body!
But Cuffys tears soon dried. After a very few seconds he raised his face, and, this having been patted with his fathers handkerchief, slid to the floor and trotted back to the nursery. And then, said Nannan, what a to-do there was! Master Cuffy dragged his little chair up beside the horse, climbed on the chair and put his arms round the animals neck, talking to it for all the world as if it was a live creature and could talk back.
What did he say?
The Dumplings eyes grew round. An sall us ave bekspup on ze big sip? asked Lallie, the elder of the twins.
Laying down her pen, she stepped through the window. Whats the matter with YOU?