Page 567 - sons-and-lovers

‘When were you poorly?’ he asked.
‘It was yesterday it began,’ she answered submissively.
‘Pains?’
‘Yes; but not more than I’ve often had at home. I believe
Dr. Ansell is an alarmist.’
‘You ought not to have travelled alone,’ he said, to him-
self more than to her.
‘As if that had anything to do with it!’ she answered
quickly.
They were silent for a while.
‘Now go and have your dinner,’ she said. ‘You MUST be
hungry.’
‘Have you had yours?’
‘Yes; a beautiful sole I had. Annie IS good to me.’
They talked a little while, then he went downstairs. He
was very white and strained. Newton sat in miserable sym-
pathy.
After dinner he went into the scullery to help Annie to
wash up. The little maid had gone on an errand.
‘Is it really a tumour?’ he asked.
Annie began to cry again.
‘The pain she had yesterday—I never saw anybody suffer
like it!’ she cried. ‘Leonard ran like a madman for Dr. An-
sell, and when she’d got to bed she said to me: ‘Annie, look
at this lump on my side. I wonder what it is?’ And there I
looked, and I thought I should have dropped. Paul, as true
as I’m here, it’s a lump as big as my double fist. I said: ‘Good
gracious, mother, whenever did that come?’ ‘Why, child,’
she said, ‘it’s been there a long time.’ I thought I should

Sons and Lovers