down to Sicily! Go on, come to Sicily with me. It's lovely there just now.
You want sun! You want life! Why, you're wasting away! Come away with me!
Come to Africa! Oh, hang Sir Clifford! Chuck him, and come along with me.
I'll marry you the minute he divorces you. Come along and try a life! God's
love! That place Wragby would kill anybody. Beastly place! Foul place! Kill
anybody! Come away with me into the sun! It's the sun you want, of course,
and a bit of normal life.'
But Connie's heart simply stood still at the thought of abandoning
Clifford there and then. She couldn't do it. No...no! She just couldn't. She
had to go back to Wragby.
Michaelis was disgusted. Hilda didn't like Michaelis, but she almost
preferred him to Clifford. Back went the sisters to the Midlands.
Hilda talked to Clifford, who still had yellow eyeballs when they got
back. He, too, in his way, was overwrought; but he had to listen to all
Hilda said, to all the doctor had said, not what Michaelis had said, of
course, and he sat mum through the ultimatum.
`Here is the address of a good manservant, who was with an invalid
patient of the doctor's till he died last month. He is really a good man,
and fairly sure to come.'
`But I'm not an invalid, and I will not have a manservant,' said
Clifford, poor devil.
`And here are the addresses of two women; I saw one of them, she would
do very well; a woman of about fifty, quiet, strong, kind, and in her way
cultured...'
Clifford only sulked, and would not answer.
`Very well, Clifford. If we don't settle something by to-morrow, I
shall telegraph to Father, and we shall take Connie away.'
`Will Connie go?' asked Clifford.
`She doesn't want to, but she knows she must. Mother died of cancer,
brought on by fretting. We're not running any risks.'
So next day Clifford suggested Mrs Bolton, Tevershall parish nurse.
Apparently Mrs Betts had thought of her. Mrs Bolton was just retiring from
her parish duties to take up private nursing jobs. Clifford had a queer
dread of delivering himself into the hands of a stranger, but this Mrs
Bolton had once nursed him through scarlet fever, and he knew her.
The two sisters at once called on Mrs Bolton, in a newish house in a
row, quite select for Tevershall. They found a rather good-looking woman of
forty-odd, in a nurse's uniform, with a white collar and apron, just making
herself tea in a small crowded sitting-room.
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