. Masham did it, saying at the same time to a
person in her company:--"Oh no, Mrs. Thrale--_she's_ all right!--we've
no call to be frightened yet a while." She added, as signs of life began
to return:--"She'll be talking directly, you'll see."

Then the sleeper became conscious, and roused herself, to the point of
exclaiming:--"Oh dear, what is it?" A second effort made her aware that
her agreeable visitor of yesterday was at her bed's foot, and that her
awakener was saying at her side:--"Now you tell her. She'll hear you
now." Mrs. Masham seemed to assume official rights as a go-between, with
special powers of interpretation.

Widow Thrale looked more Pomona-like than ever in the bright sunshine
that was just getting the better of the hoar-frost. She held in her hand
a letter, to which she seemed to cling as a credential--a sort of letter
of marque, so to speak. "'Tis a bidding from her young ladyship," said
the interpreter collaterally. She herself said, in the soothing voice of
yesterday:--"From her young ladyship, who has gone to away London
unforetold, last night. She will have me get you to my mother's, to make
a stay with us for a while. And my mother will make you kindly welcome,
for the little boy Dave's sake, and for her ladyship's satisfaction."
She read the letter of marque, as far as "take great care of her, till
you hear from me."

"I will get up and go," said the old lady. Then she appeared
disconcerted at her own alacrity, saying to the housekeeper:--"But you
have been so kind to me!"

"What her young ladyship decides," said Mrs. Masham, "it is for us to
abide by." She referred to this as a sort of superseding truth, to which
all personal feelings--gratitude, ingratitude, resentment,
forgiveness--should be subordinated. It left open a claim to
magnanimity, on her part, somehow. Further, she said she would tell
Lupin to bring some breakfast for Mrs. Pilcher.

The task of getting the old lady up to take it seemed to devolve
naturally on Widow Thrale, who accepted it discreetly and skilfully,
explaining that Mr. Brantock's cart would wait an hour to oblige, and
would go very easy along the road, not to shake. Old Maisie did not seem
alarmed, on that score.

She had lain awake in the night in some terror of the day to come, alone
with a household which appeared to have decided, though without open
declaration, that she was a plaguy old cat. She had been roused from a
final deep sleep to find that her