When he was gone and they were all alone, they looked at each other curiously.
“’Twould be nice to go an’ live with Patsey if we wasn’t goin’ to heaven,” Bess said. “I do be so afeard of mammy sometimes.”
“An’ she rummiged last night, Bess, on the shelves an’ in your bed; an’ if it hadn’t been for yer wit she’d a found the book. I was so glad it was in Misses Murphy’s, an’ I guess I’ll keep it up there every night; an’ if she finds out an’ asts, I’ll say an’ old trac’ woman left it. She won’t mind an old woman. I sh’d hate to tell such a lie, but when we see him we’ll tell him how it was. ’Cause we can’t be murdered.”
“We just won’t tell any one ’bout goin’ to heaven, either. Only Patsey, just at the last.”
Mrs. Quinn dropped her suspicions in a few days. The weather was growing colder, and she needed a little more to keep up the internal fires. She managed to pay her rent promptly, and so had a good reputation with the agent. Through Dil’s good management the boys fared very well as to food, but Bess did not eat enough to keep a bird alive.
“But the medicine helps,” she said. “It’s such splendid medicine! so much better’n that ’Spensary stuff.”
The morphine in it soothed and quieted. Sometimes Bess slept all the morning, and now she was seldom wakeful at night. Dil thought that an improvement. If only she was not so frightfully thin!
The days sped on with little variation. At Thanksgiving they had two turkeys, and several of Mrs. Quinn’s cronies came in to dinner. They feasted all the rest of the week.
And now another month was gone. Only four remained.
Alas! with all their care and caution, and the ready sympathy of Mrs. Murphy, there came a swift, crushing martyrdom to their much-loved Christiana, almost to Dil. She had hurried her supper dishes out of the way, tidied up the room, and, as her mother had gone to Mrs. MacBride’s, Dan in bed with a cold, and Owen roaming the streets, Dil brought out her book for an hour’s reading. They had come to Giant Grim and his blustering threats to the Pilgrims, who would have fared badly indeed but for Mr. Greatheart. Dil had to stop to spell many of the words; often it took the united efforts of both brains to decide the meaning of a sentence.