6
John Gibbs, of Sales Hall, milkman and news carrier, shook his head
over the cans that morning. Mrs. Sales was very bad. The master had
fetched the doctor in the early morning. He had set out in the same
car that brought him from the dance. Cook and Susan looked at each
other with a compression of lips and a nodding of heads, implying that
misfortune never came singly, but they did not tell John Gibbs of the
illness in their own house. They had imbibed something of the Mallett
reserve and they did not wish the family affairs to be blabbed at
every house in Radstowe. But when the man had gone, Susan reminded
Cook of her early disapproval of that ball. It would kill Miss
Caroline, it would kill Mrs. Sales.
'She wasn't there, poor thing,' Cook said.
'But he was, gallivanting. I dare say it upset her.'
Susan was right. Christabel Sales had fretted herself into one of her
heart attacks; but the Malletts did not know this until later. At
present they were concerned with Caroline, about whom the doctor was
reassuring. She was very ill, but she had herself remarked that if
they were expecting her to die they would be disappointed, and that
was the spirit to help recovery.
A nurse was installed in the sick-room, Sophia fluttered a little less
and Rose and Henrietta ignored their emotion of the early morning;
they also avoided each other. They were both occupied with the same
problem, though Henrietta's thoughts had taken definite shape; above
her dreaming, her practical mind was dealing with concrete details,
and Rose was merely speculating on the future, and the more she
speculated, the surer she became of the necessity to interfere.
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