"Do you think, sir, you could do without me on the tenth?"
"No. I don"t think I could possibly do without you."
Her face clouded. "Not just for the tenth?"
"Why the tenth?"
"The Dog Show, sir. And Joey"s in it."
"I forgot."
"Miss Kentish, the lady up-stairs, is going for her holiday on the tenth."
He saw that she was endeavouring to suggest that if he couldn"t do without her, he and he alone would be keeping her from the superb spectacle of the Dog Show with Joey in it.
"So you want me to go for a holiday, too. Is that it?"
"Well, sir, if it"s not inconvenient, and you don"t really mind Aunt----"
"Doesn"t she want to see Joey, too?"
"Not if you required her, sir."
"I don"t require her. I don"t require anybody. I"m going away, like the lady up-stairs, for the tenth. I shall be away all day."
"Oh, thank you, sir." She glowed. "Do you think, sir, Joey"ll get a prize?"
"Certainly, if you bring his hair on."
"It"s coming. I"ve put paraffin all over him. You"d laugh if you were to see Joey now, sir."
Rose herself was absolutely serious.
"No, Rose, I should not laugh. I wouldn"t hurt Joey"s feelings for the world."
Tanqueray had his face hidden under the table where he was setting a saucer of milk for Minny, the cat.
Rose rejoiced in their communion. "He"s quite fond of you, sir," she said.
"Of course he"s fond of me," said Tanqueray, emerging. "Why shouldn"t he be?"
"Well, Minny doesn"t take to everybody."
"I am more than honoured that he should take to me."
Rose accepted that statement with incorruptible gravity. It was the fifth day, and she had not laughed yet.
But on the seventh day he met her on the stairs going to her room. She carried a lilac gown over her arm and a large hat in her hand. She was smiling at the hat. He smiled at her.
"A new gown for the Rose Show?"
"The Dog Show, sir." She stood by to let him pa.s.s.
"It"s the same thing. I say, what a howling swell you"ll be."
At that Rose laughed (at last he had made her).
She ran up-stairs; and through a door ajar, he heard her singing in her own room.
III
In Tanqueray"s memorandum-book for nineteen hundred and two there stands this note: "June 10th. Rose Show. Remember to take a holiday."
Rose, he knew, was counting the days till the tenth.
About a fortnight before the tenth, Tanqueray was in bed, ill. He had caught a cold by walking furiously, and then lying out on the gra.s.s in the chill of the May evening. There was a chance, Rose said, of its turning to influenza and bronchitis, and it did.
He was so bad that Mrs. Eldred dragged herself up-stairs to look at him.
"Bed"s the best place, sir, for you," she said. "So just you lie quiet "ere, sir, and Rose"ll look after you. And if there"s anything you fancy, sir, you tell Rose, and I"ll make it you."
There was nothing that he fancied but to lie still there and look at Rose when, in a spare hour, she sat by his window, sewing. Bad as he was, he was not so far gone as to be ever oblivious of her presence.
Even at his worst, one night when he had had a touch of fever, he was aware of her wandering in and out of his room, hanging over him with a thermometer, and sitting by his bedside. When he flung the clothes off she was there to cover him; when his pillow grew hot she turned it; when he cried out with thirst she gave him a cool drink.
In the morning she was pale and heavy-eyed; her hair was all unsleeked, and its round coils were flattened at the back. She had lain down on her bed, dressed, for five minutes at a time, but she had not closed her eyes or her ears all night.
In a week he was well enough to enjoy being nursed. He was now exquisitely sensitive to the touch of her hands, and to the nearness of her breathing mouth as her face bent over him, tender, absorbed, and superlatively grave. What he liked best of all was to hold out his weak hands to be washed and dried by hers; that, and having his hair brushed.
He could talk to her now without coughing. Thus--
"I say, what a bother I am to you."
Rose had taken away the basin and towels, and was arranging his hair according to her own fancy. And Rose"s fancy was to part it very much on one side, and brush it back in a curl off his forehead. It gave him a faint resemblance to Mr. Robinson, the elegant young draper in the High Street, whom she knew.
"There"s nothing I like so much," said she, "as tucking people up in bed and "aving them lie there and nursing "em. Give me anybody ill, and anybody "elpless, and me lookin" after "em, and I"m happy."
"And the longer I lie here, Rose, the happier you"ll be?"
"Yes. But I want you to get well, too, sir."
"Because you"re so unselfish."
"Oh no. There isn"t anybody selfisher than me."
"I suppose," said Tanqueray, "that"s why I _don"t_ get well."