“What are you talking about touching? Poetry! froth and nonsense! I thought you came here on business—to tell me something.”
“So I did; haven’t I told you that the baby was dead?”
“But she! how about her?”
“She was just agoing, when the doctor——” Jane Kelly broke off suddenly, for Madame De Marke sprang to her feet and caught her by the dress. Jane understood this sort of thing and flung her off rudely enough.
“Then she isn’t dead?” cried the woman, working the long, sharp nails of her right hand fiercely against the palm. “But the child? Is that dead and buried?”
“Oh! I saw that nicely stowed away among a heap of little coffins, on a wheelbarrow, and ready to be bundled off to the dead-house. All right with the baby!”
“You’re sure there’s no mistake?”
“Sure? Didn’t I put on its cotton shroud myself,—a mighty scant thing, only just wide enough to wrap around its little limbs without a fold? I marked the coffin, too, with my own hands, letter L, with chalk. If you want to be satisfied, it’s easily found, and can be kept till the mother is ready. It’ll save expense, besides being so interesting.”
“Expense!” cried the occupant of the room, with a look of sharp anxiety. “Expense! I thought the city bore that. Do they charge for putting a miserable baby into Potter’s Field?”
“No, but then most people like a single grave, you know; it only costs a dollar.”