A strong hand on Josie's wrist spoke more forcibly than words could do. Sobbing and struggling, the little girl was drawn away, and Ailie saw her last hope disappear.
She gave up after that, and leant against the wall, watching the passers-by, as in a dream, no longer looking for help. And presently, as the dusk gathered round her, she turned homewards, staggering feebly in the gray shadows close to the walls, and thus escaping observation.
She had formed no plans where to go, and she was past all power of thought. Only in her suffering she shrank from the lonely misery of her retreat under the staircase, and when she entered the house, she went slowly upward, step by step, until she reached the landing where Esther Forsyth had discovered her three nights before. There again, in the same spot, she crouched down, sheltered as before from observation by the increasing darkness.
No one would be likely to remark her presence in passing. But, whether discovered or not, Ailie knew nothing of it, for she sank into insensibility, and lay there—a mere little heap of rags, covering a small bony form—in the corner of the landing.
[CHAPTER VI.]
JOSIE'S HOME.
NOT very far from the aged mansion in Ansty Court, where Ailie Carter's home had been so long, another old-fashioned house stood, in another old-fashioned street—narrow, but clean, fresh, and airy. This, too, was a large building, with numberless small windows, but each was furnished with white curtains or blinds, and on the lower window-ledges were long wooden boxes, filled with summer flowers.
All up the wide stairs lay Brussels carpeting, and the oil-cloth in the hall, of alternate dark-brown and red diamonds, had a pleasant effect. At about six o'clock Josie stood there, waiting for the sound of the tea-bell, which was usually rung to summon her from the play-room. She whiled away the time by stepping slowly from one diamond-shape to another, with all possible care to avoid treading on the light brown ground intervening. With a grave face, and hands folded loosely together, she went through her self-appointed exercise, pacing cautiously across the hall and back again, while her tiny terrier pattered daintily in her rear. Evidently Snap thought his mistress must be about some very important occupation, by the exceeding pains he took not to hinder her.
Then a side-door opened, and a gentleman, coming out, remarked in a pleasant voice—well matched by the pleasant face to which it belonged—"Josie, I did not know you were here."