A Mummers Wife | Page 7

was most unfeeling--yes, most unfeeling!' Having said so much, he leaned forward to get breath, and coughed.
'You'd better lie still, Ralph; you'll only make yourself bad again. Now that you feel a little easier you should try to go to sleep.'
So far she got without betraying any emotion, but as she continued to advise him her voice began to tremble, her presence of mind to forsake her, and she burst into a flood of tears.
'I don't know how you can treat me as you do,' she said, sobbing hysterically. 'I do everything--I give up my night's rest to you, I work hard all day for you, and in return I only receive hard words. Oh, it's no use,' she said; 'I can bear it no longer; you'll have to get someone else to mind you.'
This outburst of passion came suddenly upon Mr. Ede, and for some time he was at a loss how to proceed. At last, feeling a little sorry, he resolved to make it up, and putting out his hand to her, he said:
'Now, don't cry, Kate; perhaps I was wrong in speaking so crossly. I didn't mean all I said--it's this horrid asthma.'
'Oh, I can bear anything but to be told I neglect you--and when I stop up watching you three nights running----'
These little quarrels were of constant occurrence. Irritable by nature, and rendered doubly so by the character of his complaint, the invalid at times found it impossible to restrain his ill-humour; but he was not entirely bad; he inherited a touch of kind-heartedness from his mother, and being now moved by Kate's tears, he said:
That's quite true, and I'm sorry for what I said; you are a good little nurse. I won't scold you again. Make it up.'
Kate found it hard to forget merely because Ralph desired it, and for some time she refused to listen to his expostulations, and walked about the room crying, but her anger could not long resist the dead weight of sleep that was oppressing her, and eventually she came and sat down in her own place by him. The next step to reconciliation was more easy. Kate was not vindictive, although quicktempered, and at last, amid some hysterical sobbing, peace was restored. Ralph began to speak of his asthma again, telling how he had fancied he was going to die, and when she expressed her fear and regret he hastened to assure her that no one ever died of asthma that a man might live fifty, sixty, or seventy years, suffering all the while from the complaint; and he rambled on until words and ideas together failed him, and he fell asleep. With a sigh of relief Kate rose to her feet, and seeing that he was settled for the night, she turned to leave him, and passed into her room with a slow and dragging movement; but the place had a look so cold and unrestful that it pierced through even her sense of weariness, and she stood urging her tired brains to think of what she should do. At last, remembering that she could get a pillow from the room they reserved for letting, she turned to go.
Facing their room, and only divided by the very narrowest of passages, was the stranger's apartment.
Both doors were approached by a couple of steps, which so reduced the space that were two people to meet on the landing, one would have to give way to the other. Mr. and Mrs. Ede found this proximity to their lodger, when they had one, somewhat inconvenient, but, as he said, 'One doesn't get ten shillings a week for nothing.'
Kate lingered a moment on the threshold, and then, with the hand in which she held the novel she had been reading, she picked up her skirt and stepped across the way.

II
At first she could not determine who was passing through the twilight of the room, but as the blinds were suddenly drawn up and a flood of sunlight poured across the bed, she fell back amid the pillows, having recognized her mother-in-law in a painful moment of semi-blindness. The old woman carried a slop-pail, which she nearly dropped, so surprised was she to find Kate in the stranger's room.
'But how did you get here?' she said hastily.
'I had to give Ralph my pillow, and when he went to sleep I came to fetch one out of the bedroom here; and then I thought I would be more comfortable here--I was too tired to go back again--I don't know how it was--what does it matter?'
Kate, who was stupefied with sleep, had answered so crossly that Mrs. Ede did not speak for some time; at last, at the end of a long silence, she said:
'Then he had a very bad night?'
'Dreadful!' returned Kate. 'I never was