Читать книгу Nurse Heatherdale's Story - Mary Louisa Molesworth - Страница 5

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It was about a week after that, when one evening as we were sitting together—father, mother, and I—and father was just saying there'd be daylight enough to need no candles that night—we heard the click of the little garden gate, and a voice at the door that mother knew in a moment was Widow Nutfold's.

'Good evening to you, Mrs. Heatherdale,' she said, 'and many excuses for disturbing of you so late, but I'm that put about. Is your Martha at home?—thank goodness, my dear,' as I came forward out of the dusk to speak to her. 'It's more you nor your good mother I've come after; you'll be thinking I'm joking when you hear what it is. Can you slip on your bonnet and come off with me now this very minute to help with my little ladies? Would you believe it—that their good-for-nothing girl is off—gone—packed up this very evening—and left me with 'em all on my hands, and Miss Baby beginning with a cold on her chest, and Master Francis all but crying with the rheumatics in his poor leg. And even the page-boy, as was here at first, was took back to London last week.'

The good woman held up her hands in despair, and then by degrees we got the whole story—how the nurse had not been meaning to stay longer than suited her own convenience, but had concealed this from her lady; and having heard by a letter that afternoon of another situation which she could have if she went at once, off she had gone, in spite of all poor Widow Nutfold could say or do.

'She took a dislike to me seein' as I tried to look after her a bit and to stop her nasty cross ways, and she told me that impertinent, as I wanted to be nurse, I might be it now. She has a week or two's money owing her, but she was that scornful she said she'd let it go; she had been a great silly for taking the place.'

'But she might be had up and made to give back some of her wages,' said father.

'Sir Hulbert and my lady are not that sort, and she knows it,' said Mrs. Nutfold. 'The wages was pretty fair—it was the dulness of the life down in Cornwall the girl objected to most, I fancy.'

'Cornwall,' repeated mother. 'There now, Martha, if that isn't furrin parts, I don't know what is.'

But I hadn't time to say any more. I hurried on my shawl and bonnet, and rolled up an apron or two, and slipped a cap into a bandbox, and there I was.

'Good-night, mother,' I said. 'I'll look round in the morning—and I don't suppose I'll be wanted to stay more than a day or two. My lady's sure to find some one at once, being in London too.'

'I should think so,' said old Sarah, but there was something in her tone I did not quite understand.