"I suppose she would starve to death if I didn't give her some
food--and then _I_ should be blamed! People would be horrid about
it. I've got nothing to eat myself."
She must at any rate manage to stop the crying before she could
write to Coombe. She would be obliged to go down into the pantry
and look for some condensed milk. The creature had no teeth but
perhaps she could mumble a biscuit or a few raisins. If she could
be made to swallow a little port wine it might make her sleepy. The
sun was paying its brief morning visit to the kitchen and pantry
when she reached there, but a few cockroaches scuttled away before
her and made her utter a hysterical little scream. But there WAS
some condensed milk and there was a little warm water in a kettle
became the fire was not quite out. She imperfectly mixed a decoction
and filled a bottle which ought not to have been downstairs but
had been brought and left there by Louisa as a result of tender
moments with Edward.
When she put the bottle and some biscuits and scraps of cold ham
on a tray because she could not carry them all in her hands, her
sense of outrage and despair made her almost sob.
"I am just like a servant--carrying trays upstairs," she wept.
"I--I might be Edward--or--or Louisa." And her woe increased when
she added in the dining-room the port wine and nuts and raisins
and macaroons as viands which MIGHT somehow add to infant diet
and induce sleep.
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