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Updated: May 5, 2025
"Reely I ain't. If 'e says I'm better, 'e'd better stay away. That's the worst of these fash'nable 'Bush' doctors; they make fortunes out of flattering people they're better when they're not." Mavis had more than a suspicion that Miss Nippett's retarded convalescence was due to not having attained that position in the academy to which she believed her years of faithful service entitled her.
"An' me not there to see him in his triumph." A cloud overspread Miss Nippett's features. "What's the matter?" asked Mavis. "Did he did he send and tell you to tell me as 'ow he'd won." The wistful old eyes were so pleading, that Mavis fibbed. "Of course he sent me." "I thought he wouldn't forget his old friend," she remarked with a sigh of relief. "'E'd surely know I was anxious to know."
"But there, one mustn't be too ambitious. That's the worst of me. And it's the way to be un'appy," she sighed. Mavis walked with heavy heart to her lodging; for all her own griefs, Miss Nippett's touching faith in "Poulter's" moved her deeply. When Mavis got back, she found Mrs Scatchard and her niece in high feather.
Two or three times in the dread silent watches of the night, she was awakened by Miss Nippett's continually talking to herself. Mavis would interrupt her by asking if she would take any nourishment; but Miss Nippett, vouchsafing no answer, would go on speaking as before, her talk being entirely concerned with matters connected with the academy.
Mention was made with some pride of infrequent "Long Nights," which were also held at the Athenaeum, when dancing was kept up till three in the morning; but, as Miss Nippett's chilblains would probably be cured long before the date fixed for the next Terpsichorean Festival, as these special dances were called, no arrangement was made in respect of these.
As Miss Nippett's numbered moments remorselessly passed, the girl's heart went out to the pitiful, shrivelled figure in the bed. It seemed that an unfair contest was being fought between the might and majesty of death on the one hand, and an insignificant, work-worn woman on the other, in which the ailing body had not the ghost of a chance.
Another human trait in the proprietor of "Poulter's" was that he was insensible to Miss Nippett's loyalty to the academy, he taking her devotion as a matter of course. Miss Nippett and Mavis, also, became friends; the latter was moved by the touching faith which the shrivelled-up little accompanist had in the academy, its future, and, above all, its proprietor.
"What luck Mr Poulter's had at the dancing competition! Haven't you come about that?" "I came to see how you were." "Don't you worry about me. I shall be right again soon; reely I shall." Mavis tried to discover if Miss Nippett were properly looked after, but without result, Miss Nippett's mind being wholly possessed by "Poulter's" and its chief.
The sun rose in another such a blue sky as that on which she and Charlie Perigal had enjoyed their never-to-be-forgotten visit to Llansallas Bay. Mavis was not a little jarred by the insensibility of the June day to Miss Nippett's approaching dissolution.
But, for all Miss Nippett's resolves, it was written in the book of fate that she was to take but one more journey out of doors, and that in the simplest of raiment. For all her prodigious elation at her public association with Mr Poulter, her health far from improved; her strength declined daily; she wasted away before Mavis' dismayed eyes.
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