Part 20 (1/2)

Perhaps she would fall in some lime-pit, or ditch, or into the slimy lock of some ca.n.a.l, and die miserably.

Who would weep for her if she died? Who cared for Margaret Walsingham?

And the thought of her utter desolation overcome her, as weariness, hunger, and storm had failed to do.

She crouched down beneath a furze-bush, and, resting her hot and beating head upon her hands, wept, poor soul!

And then came unconsciousness and utter oblivion.

”I declare, John, she knows me! Here, take a sup o' this barley-water, my lamb. Dear heart! she's sensible once more. Ain't there another drop than this, John? Mayhap it's plenty.” Margaret looked with languid eyes upon the rugged figure of a man, clad in dingy red-dust habiliments, who was standing between her and a small window, with his head sunk in a curious way between his hands.

His brawny shoulders were heaving, and his rough shock of hair trembled like sea-gra.s.s in a hurricane, while a gurgling sort of noise issued from him.

Had a fit of laughter seized him, or was the man crying?

Whose bed was she lying in, hung with red calico curtains?

Where had she seen that figure in the clay-colored smock before?

And then Margaret saw a sallow-faced woman of spare figure bending over her, with a tin cup in her hand, and a glistening channel down each cheek.

”Mrs. Doane!” she breathed, in wonder.

”There I knowed it! Hark to that, John!” cried the woman, with an exultant chuckle, which threatened to be strangled by a sob.

”Didn't she call me by name, the blessed lamb?”

She raised the blessed lamb in her arms, who, truth to say, scarcely recognized herself by such an unwonted t.i.tle, and held the tin cup to her lips.

Sweeter to Margaret than Lusitanian nectar such as Chianti yields was her drink of barley water.

Margaret without working out the queer problem of how she came there, fell into a deep and quiet sleep.

And between sleeping profoundly, eating morsels of food with ravenous enjoyment, lying placidly wakeful and watching without curiosity the movements of her two nurses, Margaret saw the young moon grow into a full, round orb, which glimmered in a halo through the bottle-green gla.s.s of the cracked window, and silvered her from head to foot, each long, still night; and at last strength came to her, and with it recollection.

”Did I come to you, Mr. Doane?” she asked, one evening, when that person was sitting by her bedside peacefully smoking his pipe, and listening with pride to the voice of Johnnie in the kitchen chanting his spelling lesson.

”Come to us? No, miss, you didn't but we come to you,” replied the bricklayer, stuffing down the ashes further into his pipe.

”I want to know about it, please; I do not understand at all how I am at Lynthorpe.”

”Where was you when you was took bad?”

Margaret pondered a long time.

”The last I distinctly remember is of being a mile and a half from Rotherhithe.”

”Lor-a-musy! and didn't n.o.body give ye a seat in their wagon down here?