“He would want to come home, so that I can have all the bother. Thank you, my lad. Eh, dear, if I’m not sick—sick an surfeited, I am!”
She came downstairs. Paul had mechanically resumed his painting.
“And it must be pretty bad if they’ve taken him to the hospital,” she went on. “But what a careless creature he is! Other men don’t have all these accidents. Yes, he would want to put all the burden on me. Eh, dear, just as we were getting easy a bit at last. Put those things away, there’s no time to be painting now. What time is there a train? I know I s’ll have to go trailing to Keston. I s’ll have to leave that bedroom.”
“I can finish it,” said Paul.
“You needn’t. I shall catch the seven o’clock back, I should think. Oh, my blessed heart, the fuss and commotion he’ll make! And those granite setts at Tinder Hill—he might well call them kidney pebbles—they’ll jolt him almost to bits. I wonder why they can’t mend them, the state they’re in, an’ all the men as go across in that ambulance. You’d think they’d have a hospital here. The men bought the ground, and, my sirs, there’d be accidents enough to keep it going. But no, they must trail them ten miles in a slow ambulance to Nottingham. It’s a crying shame! Oh, and the fuss he’ll make! I know he will! I wonder who’s with him. Barker, I s’d think. Poor beggar, he’ll wish himself anywhere rather. But he’ll look after him, I know. Now there’s no telling how long he’ll be stuck in that hospital—and won’t he hate it! But if it’s only his leg it’s not so bad.”
All the time she was getting ready. Hurriedly taking off her bodice, she crouched at the boiler while the water ran slowly into er lading-can.
“I wish this boiler was at the bottom of the sea!” she exclaimed, wriggling the handle impatiently. She had very handsome, strong arms, rather surprising on a smallish woman.
Paul cleared away, put on the kettle, and set the table.
“There isn’t a train till four-twenty,” he said. “You’ve time enough.”
“Oh no I haven’t!” she cried, blinking at him over the towel as she wiped her face.
“Yes you have. You must drink a cup of tea at any rate. Should I come with you to Keston?”
“Come with me? What for, I should like to know?
