Swept and Garnished - Page 2

'Go away by the road you came!' The child passed
behind the bed-foot, where she could not see her. 'Shut the door as you
go. I will speak to Anna, but--first, put that white thing straight.'

She closed her eyes in misery of body and soul. The outer door clicked,
and Anna entered, very penitent that she had stayed so long at the
chemist's. But it had been difficult to find the proper type of
inhaler, and--

'Where did the child go?' moaned Frau Ebermann--'the child that was
here?'

'There was no child,' said startled Anna. 'How should any child come in
when I shut the door behind me after I go out? All the keys of the flats
are different.'

'No, no! You forgot this time. But my back is aching, and up my legs
also. Besides, who knows what it may have fingered and upset? Look
and see.'

'Nothing is fingered, nothing is upset,' Anna replied, as she took the
inhaler from its paper box.

'Yes, there is. Now I remember all about it. Put--put that white thing,
with the open edge--the lace, I mean--quite straight on that--' she
pointed. Anna, accustomed to her ways, understood and went to it.

'Now, is it quite straight?' Frau Ebermann demanded.

'Perfectly,' said Anna. 'In fact, in the very centre of the radiator.'
Anna measured the equal margins with her knuckle, as she had been told
to do when she first took service.

'And my tortoise-shell hair brushes?' Frau Ebermann could not command
her dressing-table from where she lay.

'Perfectly straight, side by side in the big tray, and the comb laid
across them. Your watch also in the coralline watch-holder.
Everything'--she moved round the room to make sure--'everything is as
you have it when you are well.' Frau Ebermann sighed with relief. It
seemed to her that the room and her head had suddenly grown cooler.

'Good!' said she. 'Now warm my night-gown in the kitchen, so it will be
ready when I have perspired. And the towels also. Make the inhaler
steam, and put in the eucalyptus; that is good for the larynx. Then sit
you in the kitchen, and come when I ring. But, first, my
hot-water bottle.'

It was brought and scientifically tucked in.

'What news?' said Frau Ebermann drowsily. She had not been out that day.

'Another victory,' said Anna. 'Many more prisoners and guns.'

Frau Ebermann purred, one might almost say grunted, contentedly.

'That is good too,' she said; and Anna, after lighting the inhaler-lamp,
went out.

Frau Ebermann reflected that in an hour or so the aspirin would begin to
work, and all would be well. To-morrow--no, the day after--she would
take up life with something to talk over with her friends at coffee. It
was rare--every one knew it--that she should