Mr Cavell's Diamond by Kathleen McGurl Page A

said. ‘I nursed three or four people through consumption, and they all were coughing up blood. Your master ain’t. Well, my girl, he’s your master and your patient so you make your choice whether you follow the doctor’s words or mine. I’ll be off now, I’ll be back this afternoon to sit with your master and let you get some rest.’
    She kiss ed me on the cheek and left. I went up to the master’s room and opened the windows again.
    The master w oke up at noon, and he seemed better. His skin were cool and dry, and although he were still coughing, it seemed not as bad as the night before.
    ‘ Jemima, have I slept all morning?’ he said, consulting his pocket watch I had left on a table beside his bed.
    ‘ Yes, sir, even when the doctor was here,’ I said.
    ‘ Doctor? Surely I did not…’ he break off to cough again, ‘…need a doctor? Am I that sick?’ A worried look crossed his face. ‘Did the doctor say… is it…’ He coughed again, and fell back against the pillow.
    He still ha s not coughed blood. I straightened myself up, looked him in the eye and said, ‘Do not be a-feared, sir, you do not have the consumption.’ I hoped he believed me, and even more, I prayed my Ma were right.
    ‘ Well then, that’s good news,’ he said. ‘Now, might I trouble you for a little something to eat?’
    I smile d and curtseyed and ran downstairs to make scrambled eggs, with toast and a glass of milk, just like Ma said. He ate it all, and told me he felt much better, and asked me to bring up the newspaper.
    I left him reading it, and told him to ring the bell should he need for anything more. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, with a mock salute that made me blush and have to swallow a giggle.
    I w as busy setting the fire in the drawing room in case Mr Cavell would want to come downstairs in the evening when the doorbell rang. I thought it would be either my Ma or the doctor, so I scurried to answer it without smoothing my hair or straightening my apron. But it was Frederick, he was standing there with his cap in  hand and his face all red and sweating between the freckles. I started to tell him Sultan and I could not go to the beach today but he held up a hand to shush me.
    ‘ Jemima, there is something I must ask of you,’ he said, and I blushed too for I feared I knew what was coming. ‘It is time, I think, that I took a wife, and Jemima, you are the wife I most want to take. Do you say yes?’ This came out all of a rush in one breath like he’d been practising it.
    Oh, but he is a sweet boy and I do like his company when we play on the beach along-of Sultan, but to be his wife? No one can see the future but I do believe sometimes we know what can never be in our futures, and a life living in a fisherman’s cottage along-of Frederick is not what the fortune-teller told for me. You’ll turn your back on it, she said, but she meant I’d turn my back on a fellow I loved, and for all his sweetness and freckle-face I know I don’t love Frederick.
    ‘ Frederick, you do me an honour I don’t deserve,’ I began, but then stopped for hope were building up in his eyes. I gave just the tiniest shake of my head, trying to let him down in the gentlest of ways. ‘Frederick, thank you for asking but…’ Well praise the Lord for the word ‘but’ for it seemed to make him understand without me having to actually say that most terrible of words: ‘no’. He nodded and put his cap back on his head.
    ‘ Be seeing you then, Jemima,’ he said, and with that he walked away. I was glad to see he were holding his head high. Some other more worthy girl will find herself in luck before too long, I reckon. The sigh I let out when he had gone was enough to extinguish a bonfire.
     
    I had barely closed the door when the doorbell rang again and this time it was both the doctor and my Ma who had met in the street and walked the last steps together. The doctor scolded me a dish of tongues for the open window and made me shut