She dropped the curtain, set the light on the table, knelt down and said her prayers, rose up and undressed herself; and then this extraordinary female went to bed and to sleep.

CHAPTER XX.

HUGH INGELOW KEEPS HIS PROMISE.

Mrs. Susan Sharpe was up with the lark, or, rather, with the sea-gulls whirling and shrieking out on the tossing waters. The early morning sun streamed in the little chamber; the wind wailed plaintively still, and the dull tramp, tramp of the mult.i.tudinous waves kept up their ceaseless refrain.

All was yet still in the lone farmhouse--no living thing was stirring, not even the rats, that had held high carnival all night. Down in the back yard and front garden, Tiger and Nero prowled about their beat, surlily growling at the tossing trees, and were monarchs of all they surveyed.

Mrs. Sharpe was not an imaginative person, luckily. She got up and made her toilet, and splashed herself briskly in a basin of cold water. The effect of these ablutions was singular--they effected a total cure of her inflamed eyelids.

More singular still, a wig of red hair stood on the dressing-table, and Mrs. Sharpe's cranium was adorned with a respectable growth of dark, glossy, brown hair.

"If they only saw me now," said Mrs. Sharpe to herself, with a chuckle, "I rather think they'd open their old eyes!"

She went to work artistically--reddened her eyelids over again, carefully adjusted her wig, set her cap on it, fixed her spectacles on her nose, and surveyed herself complacently in the cracked chimney-gla.s.s.

"You'll do," said Mrs. Sharpe, nodding familiarly to her image: "You're as ugly as if somebody had bespoke you. I only wonder how that little unfortunate can take to such a looking object--and she does take to me, poor dear! And now I'll write to him. He's sure to be along in the course of the morning."

Taking from her capacious pocket a blank-book and a lead-pencil, Mrs.

Susan Sharpe sat down and wrote.

And this is what Mrs. Sharpe wrote:

"She's here, and safe and well, and don't know me no more than the dead.

But I can't get her out. Two old women and one old man are on the watch all day long. I daren't sneeze but they know it. And before they go off the watch there's two big, savage dogs goes on, and prowl about all night. I don't know what to do; tell me. She's awful down-hearted, and cries and goes on. I heard your whistle last night. Her room is next to mine--the windows to the left. If you walk on the beach she'll see you; she sits at the window all day. Doctor O. is going to Cuba in a week, and going to take her with him; so you had better be quick."

Mrs. Sharpe read her own composition over two or three times, with a satisfied look.

"I think that will do," she murmured. "Trust him to find a way out of a fix, and we're in a fix now, if there ever was one. Drat the dogs! If it wasn't for them I could get on myself."

Mrs. Sharpe was not a rapid scribe. It had taken her a considerable while to write this, and the household was astir. She folded it up in the smallest possible dimensions, and wedged it into her thimble.

"A bra.s.s thimble makes a good, strong envelope," said the nurse, with a grim smile. "And now to begin my day's work."

She quitted her own apartment and went into that of her charge. Mollie was still asleep--sleeping like a babe, with lips apart, and cheeks softly flushed, and loose, golden hair falling in burnished ma.s.ses over the pillow. Involuntarily Mrs. Sharpe paused.

"She looks like a picture," she thought. "No wonder he's crazy in love."

The sound of the opening door awoke the light sleeper. She rose up on her elbow and stared around. The nurse advanced with a propitiatory smile.

"Good-morning, miss," she said, cheerfully. "I hope you had a nice sleep."

"Oh, is it you?" said Mollie. "I was dreaming I was back home with guardy, and Sir Roger, and poor Hugh, and here I am still. Oh!" in a voice of bitter anguish, "why did you awake me?"

"My poor dear," said the nurse, touched, "I didn't know, you know, or I wouldn't. There! don't think about it now, but get up, like a good girl, and wash and dress yourself, and have your breakfast comfortable. Things won't be always like this, you know."

Mollie looked wistfully at her, but Mrs. Sharpe wasn't going to commit herself, with no certainty but that listening ears were at the door.

She a.s.sisted the poor prisoner with her toilet, combed out and curled the beautiful, abundant hair, and made her as pretty as a picture.

"She's lost her rosy cheeks, and is failed away to nothing," mused the nurse. "Only for that, she'd be the loveliest thing the sun shines on."

"And now you're fixed, my pretty dear," said Mrs. Sharpe, "I'll go down and get your breakfast. n.o.body ever feels right in the morning on an empty stomach."

Down in the kitchen, Mrs. Sharpe found things in a lively state of preparation--coffee boiling, steak broiling, toast making, and m.u.f.fins baking. Old Sally, in a state threatening spontaneous combustion, bent over the fire, and Mrs. Oleander, in her rocking-chair, superintended.

"Are you only getting up now?" asked the doctor's mother, suspiciously.

"Been up these two hours, ma'am," responded Mrs. Sharpe. "I tidied up myself and my room, and then tidied up Miss Dane and her'n. I came down to fetch up her breakfast."

"It's all ready," said Sally. "Fetch along your tray."

So Susan Sharpe fetched along her tray, and received a bountiful supply of coffee and toast, and steak and m.u.f.fins.

"There's nothing like plenty of good victuals for curing the vapors,"

observed Sally, sagely. "You make the young woman eat this, Mrs. Sharpe, and she'll feel better, you'll see."

Mrs. Sharpe smiled, as she bore off her burden, at the idea Sally must have of one little girl's appet.i.te.

She found Mollie sitting at the window gazing at the sea, sparkling as if sown with stars, in the morning sunshine.

"Is it not beautiful?" she said, turning to the nurse. "Oh, if I were only free once more--free to have a plunge in that snow-white surf--free to have a breezy run along that delightful beach this magnificent morning?"

Mrs. Sharpe set down her tray, looked cautiously around her, lowered her voice, fixed her green-spectacled eyes meaningly on Mollie's face, and uttered these remarkable words:

"Wait! You may be free before long!"

"What do you mean?" cried Mollie, starting violently.

"Hush! 'Sh! 'sh!" laying her hand over the girl's mouth. "Not a word.

Walls have ears, in prisons. Take your breakfast, miss," raising her voice. "It will do you no good, acting ugly and not eating."

For the stairs had creaked under a cautious, ascending footstep, and Mrs. Sharpe had heard that creak.

So, too, had Mollie this time; and she turned her shining eyes in eloquent silence to Mrs. Sharpe, and Mrs. Sharpe had nodded, and smiled, and grimaced toward the door in a way that spoke volumes.

"I'm going down to get my breakfast, now," she said, authoritatively.

"Let me see what you'll have done by the time I get back."

The stairs were creaking again. Mrs. Sharpe did not hurry too much, and Mrs. Oleander, all panting, was back in her rocker when she re-entered the kitchen, trying very hard to look as though she had never left it.

"And how's your patient to-day, Mrs. Sharpe?" she asked, as soon as she could properly get her wind.