Elsie was forgetting to fasten the shop door. With a little start at her own negligence she secured both the bolt and the lock. She thought suddenly of the days—only a year away, yet far, far off in the deceiving distances of time—when Mr. Earlforward and she had the place to themselves. Mrs. Earlforward had come, and Mrs. Earlforward had gone, and now Elsie had sole charge—had far more responsibility and more power than ever before. The strangeness of quite simple events awed her. Nor did the chill of the thin brass handle of the milk-can in her hand protect her against the mysterious spell of the enigma of life.

She "knew" that the shop would never open again as T. T. Riceyman's. She "knew" that either Mr. or Mrs. Earlforward would die, and perhaps both; and she was very sad because she felt sorry for them, not because she felt sorry for herself. In the days previous to the amazing advent of Mrs. Earlforward Elsie had had Joe. Joe was definitely vanished from her existence. Nothing else in her own existence greatly mattered to her. She would probably lose a good situation; but she was well aware, beneath her diffidence and modesty, that by virtue of the knowledge which she had acquired from Mrs. Earlforward she could very easily get a fresh situation, and from the material point of view a better one. Professionally she had one secret ambition, to be able to say to a prospective employer that she could "wait at table." There would be something grand about that, but she saw no chance of learning such an intricate and rare business. She had never seen anybody wait at table. In the little pewed eating-houses to which once or twice Joe had taken her, or she had taken Joe, the landlady or a girl brought the food to you and took your plate away, and whisked crumbs on to the floor and asked you what else you wanted; but she felt sure that that was not waiting at table, nor anything like it.... So the ideas ran on in her mind—scores of them following one another in the space of a few seconds, until she shut off the stream with a murmured: "I'm a nice one, I am!" The solitary dÆmonic figure of Mr. Earlforward, fast in bed, was drawing her upstairs. And the shop was keeping her in the shop. And the plight of Mrs. Earlforward was pulling her away towards St. Bartholomew's Hospital. And there she stood like a regular hard-faced silly, thinking about waiting at table! She must go to Mr. Earlforward instantly, and tell him what had happened.

When she reached the first-floor she said to herself that she might as well take the milk into the kitchen first, and when she reached the kitchen she remembered poor Mrs. Earlforward's bulbs. The precious bulbs had been neglected. Out of kindness to Mrs. Earlforward she went at once and watered the soil in which they were buried, and put the pots out on the window-sill. It was an act of piety, not of faith, for Elsie had no belief in the future of those bulbs. Indeed, she counted them among the inexplicable caprices of employers. If you wanted a plant, why not buy one that you could see, instead of interring an onion in a lot of dirt? Still, for Mrs. Earlforward's sake, she took great pains over the supposed welfare of the bulbs. And yet—it must be admitted, however reluctantly—her motive in so meticulously cherishing the bulbs was by no means pure. She was afraid of the imminent interview with Mr. Earlforward, and was delaying it. If she had been sure of herself in regard to Mr. Earlforward, she would not have spent one second on the bulbs; she would have disdained them utterly.

Mr. Earlforward was somewhat animated.

"I didn't sleep much the first part of the night," he said, "but I must have had some good sleeps this morning."

Elsie thought he was a little better, but he still looked very ill indeed. His pallor was terrible, and his eyes confessed that he knew he was very ill. He was forlorn in the disordered and soiled bed; and the untidy room, with its morsel of dying fire, was forlorn.

"Well," said Elsie nervously, in a tone as if she was repeating a fact with which both of them were familiar, "well, so missis has gone to the hospital!"

She had told him. She trembled for his exclamation and his questions. He made no sound, no movement. Elsie felt extremely uncomfortable. She would have preferred any reply to this silence. She was bound to continue.

"Yes. Missis was that ill that when doctor came for you he took her off instead. I told her I'd see after you properly till you was fetched too, sir." She gave no further details. "I'm that sorry, sir," she said.

Mr. Earlforward maintained his silence. He did not seem to desire any details. He just lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling. The expression on his hollowed face, now the face of a man of seventy, drew tears to Elsie's eyes, and she had difficulty in restraining a sob. The aspect of her employer and of the room, the realization of the emptiness of the rest of the house, the thought of Mrs. Earlforward snatched away into the mysterious and formidable interior of the legendary hospital, were intolerable to Elsie, who horribly surmised that "they" must be cutting up the unconscious form of her once lively and impulsive mistress. To relieve the tension which was overpowering her Elsie began to straighten the rumpled eiderdown.

"I'll run and make you some of that arrowroot, sir," she said. "You must have something, so it's no use you——"

Mr. Earlforward said nothing; then his head dropped on one side, and his eyes met hers.

"Elsie," he murmured plaintively, "you won't desert me?"

"Of course not, sir. But the doctor's coming for you."

"Never!" Mr. Earlforward insisted, ignoring her last sentence. "You'll never desert me?"

"Of course not, sir." His weakness gave her strength.

In order to continue in activity, she went to mend the fire.

"Let it out," said Mr. Earlforward. "I'm too hot."

She desisted, well knowing that he was not too hot, but that he hated to see good coal consumed in a grate where it had never been consumed before. From pity she must humour him. What did it matter whether the fire was in or out?—the doctor would be coming for him very soon. Then a flicker of thought for herself: after the departure of Mr. Earlforward, would she have to stay and mind the place till something else happened, or would she be told to go, and let the place mind itself? Very probably she would be told to stay. She opened the door.

"Where are you going now?"

"I was just going to make your arrowroot, sir. That was what missis was giving you. At least, it looks like arrowroot."

"Come here. I want to talk to you. Have you opened the shop?"

"No, sir."

A long pause.

"Bring me up the letters, and let me have my glasses."

He had accepted, in his practical, compromising philosophy, the impressive fact that the shop had not been and would not be opened.

Without saying anything Elsie went downstairs into the shadowy shop. A dozen or so letters lay on the floor. "I'll give him two or three to quiet him," she thought, counting him now as a baby. She picked up three envelopes at random. "He'd better not have them all," she thought. The others she left lying. She had no concern whatever as to the possible business importance of any of the correspondence. Her sole concern, apart from the sick-room, was the condition of the shop. Ought she to clean it, or ought she to "let it go"? She wanted to clean it, because it was obviously fast returning to its original state of filth. On the other hand, while cleaning it she might be neglecting her master. None but herself had the power to decide which course should be taken. She perceived that she was mistress. NaÏvely she enjoyed the strange sensation of authority, but the responsibility of authority dismayed her.

"Are these all?" Mr. Earlforward asked indifferently, as she put the three letters into his limp, shiny hand.

"Yes, sir," she said without compunction.

He allowed the letters to slip out of his hand on to the eiderdown. She was just a little afraid of being alone with him.