They had to tell her all about the fire, as though it were a thing new to her, and how she had saved Bonnibel.
“Oh, did I?” she said. “Did I?—air yuh sure?”
“Sure, miss?” echoed the admiring Hicks. “Sure? Well, I think we be pretty sure o’ that ’ere! Bean’t we, boys?”
They could not say enough.
One thought was making music in Virginia’s heart. “Perhaps he’ll forgive me now,” she said over and over to herself. She looked upward at the starry heavens through the broad leaves of the catalpa-trees, as they bore her up the last hill to the house, with a feeling closely akin to joy. “I’ve saved Bonnibel,” she thought—“I’ve saved Bonnibel, anyways; ef he don’t forgive me, I’ve done, somethin’ to make him glad. ’Twas awful in that burnin’ place; but I saved her—I saved her—I saved her.” She said the last three words out loud.
“That you did, miss,” said the boy Hicks, who walked close beside her. “Tell her again, boys.”
They told her over and over again, first one and then the other; she seemed never tired of listening. For the first time in many, many days her white lips fell into the gracious curves they used to know so well. She was smiling—smiling for sheer happiness. She was hurt to death, she knew that; something whispered it in her glad ears as distinctly as though the good God had bent from his great heavens himself to tell her so; and she knew—ah! she knew—that her God had forgiven her. Death had brought her two gifts so sweet in his chill arms that his embrace scarcely frightened her. As they carried her with slow carefulness up the front steps and into the wide hall an innocent fancy seized her; she would like so much to die in Mr. Jack’s room—on his little iron bed. There couldn’t be any harm, could there? She looked so wistfully up into the face of little Hicks that he felt she wanted something, and asked her what it was.
“Kyar me into Mr. Jack’s room,” she whispered. “It’s—it’s nearer the ground.”