"Mrs. Mokes told me you'd gone. 'Silly girl, too!' says she. As if you could ha' done a scrap o' good to anybody by all your going! Why, they might have been all drowned before your eyes; and I s'pose you'd just ha' sat and cried. Much use that would have been."
Jessie tried to speak, and produced only a clatter of shaking teeth.
Miss Perkins glanced up in astonishment. "Eh?" she said.
The girl was clinging to her chair, white as a table-cloth. She met her aunt's eyes, and tried to laugh; but the chair shook beneath her.
"That's the sort of thing, is it?" quoth Miss Perkins, with a certain grim satisfaction. "Didn't I say you'd catch your death o' cold? Shouldn't wonder but you've done it now. You'll just come straight upstairs this minute, and get into bed, and have a basin of gruel, and not stir till I give you leave. I'm not going to have you ill on my hands too, if I can help it."
"Please—" protested Jessie.
But she was in no state for effective resistance; and Miss Perkins hauled rather than helped her up the two flights.
Midway, as they passed the open door of the spare room on the first landing, Jessie exclaimed, "Why, there's a fire!"
"Well, why not?"
Jessie stared in bewilderment.