Kind Are Her Answers Read Online Free PDF Page B

you?”
    Her old lama’s smile spread smoothly over Miss Heath’s grey face.
    “I’m well cared for, doctor. I’m waited on far too much. I’ve my little Christie to look after me.” She laid a hand, with the skin like fine yellow crêpe, over the hand of the girl resting on the eiderdown beside her.
    The door opened behind Kit; a smooth sound, for the old lock was the work of a leisured craftsman, beautifully made.
    “I beg your pardon, madam. I thought I heard—”
    It was Pedlow, though it took Kit a second or two to recognize her. Her tight rigid uniform had been so much a part of her that her emergence from it was slightly shocking, as if she had shed part of her skin. She had, in fact, in her haste left her teeth behind, and lisped a little. She was wearing a white calico nightgown, with a buttoned frill in front and a little round collar, and was holding bunched round her a dressing gown of dark crimson wool. Her faded hair, dragged into two thin plaits, showed the pink scalp between its strands. Kit had not noticed before that the puffs which supported her cap were false. He saw her for the first time as a woman, and felt a faint shock of repulsion; it was as if something that had lived for years underground had been disturbed into daylight.
    The girl looked up at her, and smiled.
    “It’s all right, Pedlow. Don’t worry. Dr. Anderson says Miss Heath will be all right now. You go back to bed again. There isn’t anything more to do.”
    Pedlow stood still for a moment. Her lips, drawn back a little from her shrunken gums, showed a tiny black hole in the middle. Her eyes were like narrow black spaces too, as they shifted, travelling past Kit, to the girl. They passed over her face and body and the triangle of white skin where the lapels of her gown crossed, narrowing while the little gap of her mouth tightened.
    Kit had, for a moment, a creepy feeling. His life had freed him almost entirely from squeamishness of the simple kind; but the very naturalness of this made him more sensitive to certain kinds of undertone. They showed up against the well disinfected surfaces of his mind, like a thumb-mark on clean enamel. Looking away, he occupied himself with coiling his stethoscope and returning it to his pocket. When he straightened himself, Pedlow had gone.
    “Poor Pedlow,” said Miss Heath. “She’s always so distressed if she thinks I’ve been unwell. But she sleeps so soundly. She was always a poor riser as a young girl. I remember it well, and the trouble it gave my dear mother. Fancy her waking like that to-night. Now, Dr. Anderson, you’ll take something, won’t you, before you go? A glass of sherry? Christie, my dear—”
    Kit thanked her, and declined. He was feeling tired, vaguely disturbed and irritable, and looked forward to making up the rest of his night’s sleep.
    The girl saw him out. They crossed the antlered cavern of the hall in silence.
    Under the clearer light of the porch her hair looked crisp and shining with life. It grew strongly back from her brows, falling in deep waves behind the temples and covering her neck. She had brushed it back without fastening of any kind, and a strand of it was beginning to stray down over her forehead. He wondered how she wore it during the day. At the inner door of the porch they both paused, in the kind of silence when people seek not for something to say but for some excuse to separate without saying anything. At last the girl said, “I hope this wasn’t too unnecessary.”
    “Certainly not.” He spoke with a needless emphasis, as if she had said something highly controversial. “If she has similar symptoms again, please send for me immediately.” There was another pause. Kit said, “Well—,” made a movement to the door and stopped again. “Are you a relative of Miss Heath’s?” he asked.
    “I’m her great-niece.” She showed no disposition to elaborate this. Kit, with his hand on the door, said, “I’m afraid this is rather