She threw herself on the floor, and beat her fists on the carpet. Tommy stood near and wept in sympathy; he wore his remnant trousers, and his little straw hat, round which Mrs. Wiggs had sewn a broad band of black.
Miss Bell hovered over Lovey Mary and patted her nervously on the back. "Don't, my dear, don't cry so. It's very sad—dear me, yes, very sad. You aren't alone to blame, though; I have been at fault, too. I— I—feel dreadfully about it."
Miss Bell's face was undergoing such painful contortions that Lovey
Mary stopped crying in alarm, and Tommy got behind a chair.
"Of course," continued Miss Bell, gaining control of herself, "it was very wrong of you to run away, Mary. When I discovered that you had gone I never stopped until I found you."
"Till you found me?" gasped Lovey Mary.
"Yes, child; I knew where you were all the time."
Again Miss Bell's features were convulsed, and Mary and Tommy looked on in awed silence. "You see," she went on presently, "I am just as much at fault as you. I was worried and distressed over having to let Tommy go with Kate, yet there seemed no way out of it. When I found you had hidden him away in a safe place, that you were both well and happy, I determined to keep your secret. But oh, Mary, we hadn't the right to keep him from her! Perhaps the child would have been her salvation; perhaps she would have died a good girl."
"But she did, Miss Bell," said Lovey Mary, earnestly. "She said she was sorry again and again, and when she went to sleep Tommy's arms was round her neck."
"Mary!" cried Miss Bell, seizing the girl's hand eagerly, "did you find her and take him to her?"
"No, ma'am. I brought her to him. She didn't have no place to go, and I wanted to make up to her for hating her so. I did ever'thing I could to make her well. We all did. I never thought she was going to die."