it was, she felt she could not settle well to her work, unless she learnt how kind good Alice Wilson was going on.
So, eating her crust-of-bread breakfast, she passed rapidly along the street. She remembered afterwards the little groups of people she had seen, eagerly hearing, and imparting news; but at the time her only care was to hasten on her way, in dread of a reprimand from Miss Simmonds.
She went into the house at Jane Wilson’s, her heart at the instant giving a strange knock, and sending the rosy flush into her face, at the thought that Jem might possibly be inside the door. But I do assure you, she had not thought of it before. Impatient and loving as she was, her solicitude about Alice on that hurried morning had not been mingled with any thought of him.
Her heart need not have leaped, her colour need not have rushed so painfully to her cheeks, for he was not there. There was the round table, with a cup and saucer, which had evidently been used, and there was Jane Wilson sitting on the other side, crying quietly, while she ate her breakfast with a sort of unconscious appetite. And there was Mrs. Davenport washing away at a nightcap or so, which, by their simple, old-world make, Mary knew at a glance were Alice’s. But nothing—no one else.
Alice was much the same, or rather better of the two, they told her: at any rate she could speak, though it was sad rambling talk. Would Mary like to see her?
Of course she would. Many are interested by seeing their friends under the new aspect of illness; and among the poor there is no wholesome fear of injury or excitement to restrain this wish.
So Mary went upstairs, accompanied by Mrs. Davenport, wringing the suds off her hands, and speaking in a loud whisper far more audible than her usual voice.
“I mun be hastening home, but I’ll come again tonight, time enough to iron her cap; ‘twould be a sin and a shame if we let her go dirty now she’s ill, when she’s been so rare and clean all her life long. But she’s sadly forsaken, poor thing! She’ll not know you, Mary; she knows none of us.”
The room upstairs held two beds, one superior in the grandeur of four posts and checked curtains to the other, which had been occupied by the twins in their brief lifetime. The smaller had been Alice’s bed since she had lived there; but with the natural reverence to one “stricken of God and afflicted,” she had been installed, since her paralytic stroke the evening before, in the larger and grander bed; while Jane Wilson had taken her short broken rest on the little pallet.
Margaret came forwards to meet her friend, whom she half expected, and whose step she knew. Mrs. Davenport returned to her washing.
The two girls did not speak; the presence of Alice awed them into silence. There she lay with the rosy colour, absent from her face since the days of childhood, flushed once more into it by her sickness nigh unto death. She lay on the affected side, and with her other arm she was constantly sawing the air, not exactly in a restless manner, but in a monotonous, incessant way, very trying to a watcher. She was talking away, too, almost as constantly, in a low indistinct tone. But her face, her profiled countenance, looked calm and smiling, even interested by the ideas that were passing through her clouded mind.
“Listen!” said Margaret, as she stooped her head down to catch the muttered words more distinctly.
“What will mother say? The bees are turning homeward for th’ last time, and we’ve a terrible long bit to go yet. See! here’s a linnet’s nest in this gorse-bush. Th’ hen bird is on it. Look at her bright eyes, she won’t stir. Ay! we mun hurry home. Won’t mother be pleased with the bonny lot of heather we’ve got! Make haste, Sally, maybe we shall have cockles for supper. I saw th’ cockleman’s donkey turn up our way fra’ Arnside.”
Margaret touched Mary’s hand, and the pressure in return told her that they understood each other; that they knew how in this illness to the old, world-weary woman, God had sent her a veiled blessing: she was once more in the scenes of her childhood, unchanged and bright as in those long departed days; once more with the sister of her youth, the playmate of fifty years ago, who had for nearly as many years slept in a grassy grave in the little churchyard beyond Burton.
Alice’s face changed; she looked sorrowful, almost penitent.
“O Sally! I wish we’d told her. She thinks we were in church all morning, and we’ve gone on deceiving her. If we’d told her at first how it was—how sweet th’ hawthorn smelt through the open church door, and how we were on th’ last bench in the aisle, and how it were the first butterfly we’d seen this spring, and how it flew into th’ very church itself; oh! mother is so gentle, I wish we’d told her. I’ll go to her next time she comes in sight, and say, ‘Mother, we were naughty last Sabbath.’”
She stopped, and a few tears came stealing down the old withered cheek, at the thought of the temptation and deceit of her childhood. Surely many sins could not have darkened that innocent childlike spirit since. Mary found a red-spotted pocket-handkerchief, and put it into the hand which sought about for something to wipe away the trickling tears. She took it with a gentle murmur.
“Thank you, mother.”
Mary pulled Margaret away from the bed.
“Don’t you think she’s happy, Margaret?”
“Ay! that I do, bless her. She feels no pain, and knows nought of her present state. Oh! that I could see, Mary! I try and be patient with her afore me, but I’d give aught I have to see her, and see what she wants. I am so useless! I mean to stay here as long as Jane Wilson is alone; and I would fain be here all tonight, but”—
“I’ll come,” said Mary decidedly.
“Mrs. Davenport said she’d come again, but she’s hardworked all day”—
“I’ll come,” repeated Mary.
“Do!” said Margaret, “and I’ll be here till you come. Maybe, Jem and you could take th’ night between you, and Jane Wilson might get a bit of sound sleep in his bed; for she were up and down the better part of last night, and just when she were in a sound sleep this morning, between two and three, Jem came home, and th’ sound o’ his voice roused her in a minute.”
“Where had he been till that time o’ night?” asked Mary.
“Nay! it were none of my business; and, indeed, I never saw him till he came in here to see Alice. He were in again this morning, and seemed sadly downcast. But you’ll, maybe, manage to comfort him tonight, Mary,” said Margaret, smiling, while a ray of hope glimmered in Mary’s heart, and she almost felt glad, for an instant, of the
