“Give them some, poor dears, they want it badly. It costs nothing, so give them enough. It’s a dreadful thing to be thirsty,” said the poor woman, relinquishing the pitcher and drawing a deep, broken breath.
Jane set the pitcher down before the hen-coop, and the poor creatures made a rush at it, darting their eager heads one over the other through the bars, and casting upturned glances as they threw back their bills to swallow the water for which they had been thirsting. The old woman turned herself over to the side of the bed and watched them with a look of keen enjoyment, working her withered and moist lips in sympathy with their tumultuous satisfaction, and talking to them in broken exclamations, as if they had been human beings.
“Now,” said Jane Kelly; “tell me where I can get something to eat. You are starved almost to death, and I am about as well off—haven’t tasted a mouthful since yesterday.”
“Something to eat? Oh, yes! one can’t live without eating, and that’s what makes life so expensive. If you had a little money now—”
“Haven’t got a red cent in the world; that’s why I came here!” answered Jane, indignantly. “Came a purpose for the gold you are rolling in, and mean to have it, too!”
“Oh!” sighed Madame De Marke, “if I only had it here, you shouldn’t go away empty-handed.”
“I don’t intend to go away empty-handed, nor hungry either, so long as there is a box full of gold and diamonds under your bed, my fine old lady!” cried Jane, preparing to creep under the miserable cot on which Madame De Marke lay.
A low, cracked laugh broke from the sick woman, as she felt the rather stout person of Jane Kelly striving to force itself between the crossed supporters of her couch in search of the box; but she said nothing. When an oath bespoke the disappointment of her visitor, in not finding the object of her search, the old woman began to shiver with affright, for there was something fiendish in the sound.
“Now,” said Jane Kelly, lifting herself fiercely from the floor, “you’ll have the goodness, just for the novelty of the thing, to tell me where that box, with the iron bars in which you keep my ear-rings and somebody else’s gold, is hid away. I want that box, and I mean to have that box. Do you understand, my precious old Jezebel?”
“It’s in the bank. It’s been in the bank ever since that night!”