Weetman was just going to drive into town; he sat fuming in the trap behind the fat bay pony.
“Bring me that whip from the passage,” he shouted; “there’s never a damn thing handy!”
Phemy appeared with the whip. “Take me with you,” she said.
“God-a-mighty! What for? I be comin’ back in an hour. They ducks want looking over and you’ve all the taties to grade.”
She stared at him irresolutely.
“And who’s to look after the house? You know it won’t lock up–the key’s lost. Get up there!”
He cracked his whip in the air as the pony dashed away.
In the summer Phemy fell sick, her arm swelled enormously. The doctor came again and again. It was blood-poisoning, caught from a diseased cow that she had milked with a cut finger. A nurse arrived but Phemy knew she was doomed, and though tortured with pain she was for once vexed and protestant. For it was a June night, soft and nubile, with a marvellous moon; a nightingale threw its impetuous garland into the air. She lay listening to it, and thinking with sad pleasure of the time when Glastonbury was in prison, how grand she was in her solitude, ordering everything for the best and working superbly. She wanted to go on and on for evermore, though she knew she had never known peace in maidenhood or marriage. The troubled waters of the world never ceased to flow; in the night there was no rest–only darkness. Nothing could emerge now. She was leaving it all to Rosa Beauchamp. Glastonbury was gone out somewhere–perhaps to meet Rosa in the fields. There was the nightingale, and it was very bright outside.
“Nurse,” moaned the dying girl, “what was I born into the world at all for?”