Part 77 (1/2)

'Oh dear! I've been very wicked.'

'But you won't be so any more.'

'No, no, no. I won't, I won't, I won't.'

She talked hurriedly, almost wildly. The coa.r.s.e old woman tapped her forehead with her finger. Falconer took the girl's hand.

'What is your name?' he said.

'Nell.'

'What more?'

'Nothing more.'

'Well, Nelly,' said Falconer.

'How kind of you to call me Nelly!' interrupted the poor girl. 'They always calls me Nell, just.'

'Nelly,' repeated Falconer, 'I will send a lady here to-morrow to take you away with her, if you like, and tell you how you must do to find Jesus.--People always find him that want to find him.'

The elderly woman with the rough voice, who had not spoken since he whispered to her, now interposed with a kind of cowed fierceness.

'Don't go putting humbug into my child's head now, Mr. Falconer--'ticing her away from her home. Everybody knows my Nell's been an idiot since ever she was born. Poor child!'

'I ain't your child,' cried the girl, pa.s.sionately. 'I ain't n.o.body's child.'

'You are G.o.d's child,' said Falconer, who stood looking on with his eyes s.h.i.+ning, but otherwise in a state of absolute composure.

'Am I? Am I? You won't forget to send for me, sir?'

'That I won't,' he answered.

She turned instantly towards the woman, and snapped her fingers in her face.

'I don't care that for you,' she cried. 'You dare to touch me now, and I'll bite you.'

'Come, come, Nelly, you mustn't be rude,' said Falconer.

'No, sir, I won't no more, leastways to n.o.body but she. It's she makes me do all the wicked things, it is.'

She snapped her fingers in her face again, and then burst out crying.

'She will leave you alone now, I think,' said Falconer. 'She knows it will be quite as well for her not to cross me.'

This he said very significantly, as he turned to the door, where he bade them a general good-night. When we reached the street, I was too bewildered to offer any remark. Falconer was the first to speak.

'It always comes back upon me, as if I had never known it before, that women like some of those were of the first to understand our Lord.'

'Some of them wouldn't have understood him any more than the Pharisee, though.'