But it was no hour for finding cabs; it was the hour of the scavenger
and no other being; and Rachel walked into broad sunlight before she
spied a solitary hansom. It was then she did the strangest thing;
instead of driving straight back for her trunk, when near the house she
gave the cabman other directions, subsequently stopping him at one with
a card in the window.
A woman answered the bell with surprising celerity, and a face first
startled and then incensed at the sight of Mrs. Minchin.
"So you never came!" cried the woman, bitterly.
"I was prevented," Rachel replied coldly. "Well?"
And the monosyllable was a whisper.
"He is still alive," said the woman at the door.
"Is that all?" asked Rachel, a catch in her voice.
"It is all I'll say till the doctor has been."
"But he has got through the night," sighed Rachel, thankfully. "I could
see the light in his room from hour to hour, even though I could not
come. Did you sit up with him all night long?"
"Every minute of the night," said the other, with undisguised severity
in her fixed red eyes. "I never left him, and I never closed a lid."
"I am so sorry!" cried Rachel, too sorry even for renewed indignation at
the cause.
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