could not cause the jars and the pots to be replaced in the pony-carriage, as he would have done had the position of his wife been different. In her state it would have been barbarous to refuse them, and barbarous also to have created the fracas of a refusal; but each parcel that was introduced was an additional weight laid on the sore withers of his pride, till the total burden became almost intolerable. All this his wife saw and recognized even in her illness, and did make some slight ineffectual efforts to give him ease; but Lucy in her new power was ruthless, and the chicken to make the chicken-broth was taken out of the basket under his very nose.
But Lucy did not remain long. She had made up her mind what it behooved her to do herself, and she was soon ready to return to Framley. "I shall be back again, Mr. Crawley," she said, "probably this evening, and I shall stay with her till she is better." "Nurses don't want rooms," she went on to say, when Mr. Crawley muttered something as to there being no bedchamber. "I shall make up some sort of a litter near her; you'll see that I shall be very snug." And then she got into the pony-chaise and drove herself home.
Lucy, as she drove herself home, had much as to which it was necessary that she should arouse her thoughts. That she would go back and nurse Mrs. Crawley through her fever she was resolved. She was free agent enough to take so much on herself, and to feel sure that she could carry it through. But how was she to redeem her promise about the children? Twenty plans ran through her mind as to the farm-houses in which they might be placed, or cottages which might be hired for them; but all these entailed the want of money; and at the present moment, were not all the inhabitants of the Parsonage pledged to a dire economy? This use of the pony-carriage would have been illicit under any circumstances less pressing than the present, for it had been decided that the carriage, and even poor Puck himself, should be sold. She had, however, given her promise about the children, and, though
