The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX. No. 1013, May 27, 1899

A WORM AT THE ROOTS.

Each looked at the other, aghast. An expression as of sudden enlightenment flitted across the boyish face of Tom Black; but nobody noticed that.

“That sound means some accident!” exclaimed Lucy, hurrying out of the room. Miss Latimer followed her. Mr. Somerset and young Black stayed behind, Mr. Somerset holding back little Hugh.

But they only lingered for a moment. A cry from Lucy and a pungent smell of burning which saluted their nostrils set them too running downstairs.

Mrs. Challoner and Miss Latimer were bending over the body of Mrs. Morison, prostrate just outside the dining-room door. A japanned tray containing knives and forks and spoons, scattered over the floor, explained the crash which had followed the heavy fall. Little Hugh shrieked, “Mrs. Morison is dead!” and began to cry. But she breathed stertorously.

“She has had a fit,” Lucy said. “Working over the big fire has brought it on.”

Wilfrid Somerset caught up his hat.

“I know the nearest doctor’s!” he exclaimed, and, putting young Black aside, he hirpled off, self-consciousness suspended in his eager desire to be of service.

“Mrs. Morison isn’t dead, dear,” Miss Latimer reassured little Hugh; “but she is very ill, and you must not interrupt us while we take care of her.”

She led him into the dining-room and bade him watch at the window for the coming of Mr. Somerset and the doctor. Then she returned to Lucy. Young Black had got some water, and Lucy was dashing it on her servant’s face. But, though she struggled and writhed under the chill, it did not rouse her.

“What was she bringing up these things for?” asked Lucy, looking round at the scattered cutlery. “She knew I had set out the table already.”

“It’s likely there was a good deal of mental confusion before the fit came,” suggested the old governess.

Tom Black stood over the prostrate figure and the kneeling ladies. It was true he had fetched the water, but otherwise he did not seem eagerly sympathetic. Suddenly he said—

“There’s something on fire somewhere!”

“Certainly there is,” assented Lucy, her senses regaining their power of attention. “I think it must be downstairs. I can’t move.” (She was trying to support the heavy, tossing head.) “Will you both go and see what is burning, and do your best with it?”

As the old lady and the youth descended the kitchen stair he whispered to her—

“That woman is tipsy.”

“Oh, surely not!” Miss Latimer replied. “Mrs. Challoner has told me she is an excellent servant and a respectable person.”

“She is tipsy,” he repeated. “I saw it when I came in. But I didn’t think she was quite so bad as this.”

It was a terrible picture that met their eyes as they entered that kitchen, which only a few hours before had been so bright and trim. A big fire was burning, and a clothes-rail—covered with damask table-napkins, among which hung an old rag mat—had been put so close to the bars that one of the napkins was nearly consumed, two or three were scorched, and the rag rug was smouldering. To draw back the clothes-rail and to throw the burning mat into the sink was the work of a moment, and effectually ended a great danger.

The hearth was blurred with trodden cinders and spotted with grease. There were two pots standing on the range, one containing burnt-up porridge, and the other full of water with something floating in it which looked like a rag. Miss Latimer hurriedly opened the oven door, fully expecting to see a cindered fowl; but the oven was empty. Going to a cupboard she discovered the little turkey nicely trussed. That had been done the previous night, and it had not been touched since. Miss Latimer quietly lifted it down and put it into the oven. Dinner would be certainly late; but it would be the earlier the sooner one made a beginning.

“I fear you are right, after all,” she said to Tom Black. “Yet this fit may have been coming on, and that may have stopped her work, and—— Ah!”

Tom had also been making an investigation, and as she was speaking, he held up before her shocked eyes a bottle of whisky. It was still in the paper in which it had been sold; but it was almost empty.

“There’s the doctor and Mr. Somerset!” Miss Latimer exclaimed with a tone of relief. “Now we shall soon know the truth. Anyway, we’re not wanted upstairs just this minute—we’d be only in the way. So let us try to get a little to the bottom of things down here. I know how keenly Mrs. Challoner will feel all this,” she said, confiding in the youth whom she had never seen till half an hour before, but for whose domestic help she now appealed as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Will you just see what is in that basin beside you?”

Tom lifted the cover, peering gingerly.

“I believe this is the pudding,” he said.

“Dear me; very likely,” said Miss Latimer.

She went back to the fireplace, and, dipping her fingers into the pot of water, drew forth the floating rag. It was the pudding-cloth neatly fastened up; only the pudding had never been inside!

“And what is that strange noise I hear?” asked the old lady, gazing around.

“It is the cat,” said Tom. “She is under the dresser, and she keeps ‘swearing.’”

The young man seemed rather afraid to approach the indignant animal; but the old lady bravely put in her hand and drew pussy out.

“No wonder she ‘swears,’ poor dear!” she observed. “Hot oil or grease has been dropped on her, and has burned away about an inch of fur. I don’t know what we can do for her, especially just now. But, at least, we’ll give her a saucer of milk as a sign of sympathy.”

At that moment the uncertain step of Wilfrid Somerset was heard on the kitchen stair.

“Mrs. Challoner asks me to get the cushions off the armchair,” he said, “and I’m afraid you’ll be wanted,” he added, addressing Tom, “for I’m a poor, useless creature where bodily strength is required.”

Without a moment’s hesitation the doctor had diagnosed Mrs. Morison’s “fit.”

“She’s been drinking,” he said laconically.

“But there is no smell of spirit,” pleaded Lucy, reluctant to lose faith in the unhappy woman.

“No,” said the doctor; “but there’s the scent of the little lozenges which gentlemen take to hide the smell of tobacco. That’s the secret, ma’am. This case doesn’t want any treatment save to be put on a safe couch and allowed ‘to sleep it off,’ when I trust she will awake properly ashamed of herself.”

It was impossible to carry the heavy inert body to the servant’s bedroom upstairs. But there was a little closet-like room at the back of the hall, empty save for a few ferns and polled plants which Lucy kept there. In that room Mr. Somerset arranged all the cushions he could find in the kitchen, which were not a few, since they included the mattress of a chair-bedstead which stood there in its chair capacity. Then the doctor and Tom Black carried in the unconscious woman, while poor Lucy gathered up the scattered cutlery, which included a broken knife, a toasting-fork, and an oyster opener.

“I am so sorry to have called you out on Christmas Day, and for what, after all, was no work of yours,” said Lucy to the doctor as he came back through the hall, drawing down his cuffs and straightening his coat.