"No, no; this morning I had a fall and struck my head and hurt it so--
look," and taking off her hat, she showed the plaster on her forehead.

That satisfied the woman, who had only been thinking of fever and her own
little ones, who were more to her than any stranger, and her manner
became kind at once. She imagined that her lodger was a young lady who
for some reason had run away from her friends. Smoothing down the
coverlet, she went away to get change, closing the door after her, and
then, with a sigh of relief, Fan threw herself on to the poor bed.

The pain she was in, and state of exhaustion after the violent emotions
and the rough handling she had experienced, prevented her from thinking
much of her miserable forlorn condition. She only wished for rest Yet she
could not rest, but turned her hot flushed face and throbbing head from
side to side, moaning with pain. By-and-by the woman came back with the
change and a very big cup of hot tea.

"This'll do your head good," she said. "Better drink it hot, miss; I
always say there's nothing like a cup of tea for the headache."

Fan took it gratefully and drank the whole of it, though it was rougher
tea than she had been accustomed to of late. And the woman proved a good
physician; it had the effect of throwing her into a profuse perspiration,
and before she had been alone for many minutes she fell asleep.

She did not wake until past nine o'clock, and found a lighted candle on
her table; her poor landlady had been up perhaps more than once to visit
her. She felt greatly refreshed; the danger, if there had been any, was
over now, but she was still drowsy--so drowsy that she longed to be
asleep again; and she only got up to undress and go to bed in a more