Plenty of such poverty-stricken books were lying about in the wards all the time; but this was a very different affair. The book was almost new, the velvet fresh and bright as the sunny side of a plum. The clasp seemed to be of pure gold, and the paper was thick, smooth, and of a rich creamy white that met the touch like satin. These ladies did not write their names, and call the paupers “dear friends” when they distributed their pious offerings to the inmates of the hospital.
Such was the burden of Jane Kelly’s thoughts, as she sat with her eyes on the ground, and her feet half buried in the refuse straw just emptied from the bed.
She got up at last, folded the book and letter in an old pocket-handkerchief, and went to work again, still thoughtful, and revolving something in her mind.
“If the girl stole it,” she said, talking to herself, as she sometimes did when no one was by to listen,—“if she stole it, why, then, the lady will be glad to get it back again, and no harm done, or good, either, except it may be a dollar-bill or so on my side of the reckoning. If it really belonged to the poor creature, and, after all, she looked and talked like a lady, this rich madam must have known her well, and there is something at the bottom of it all which may bring lots of dollar-bills. At any rate, there’s no harm in trying. That letter gives me courage. I’ll try it, anyhow.”
Jane Kelly now fell to her work with vigor, and directly where the death-couch of that young girl had been, a cot, piled high and evened down under a coarse white counterpane, stood ghostly and cold, like an enormous grave just sheeted with snow; and all the ward took that air of chill cleanliness which, in a large room full of human beings, is necessary and admirable, but bleak as a desert.
It was a little remarkable that Jane was constantly going to and fro from the spot where she happened to be at work to Mrs. Dillon’s bed; that she sometimes felt her pulse, and once or twice, during the morning, took up young Ireland, and fed him from a bottle with her own hands.
It was also singular that she never went near the younger woman, and seemed shy of even looking at her. People are sometimes seized with repulsion against persons about whom they have meditated great injury. Was this the case with Jane Kelly?
It was deep in the day before Mary Margaret was aroused; but the lusty cries of her child at last broke the leaden sleep that was upon her, and she sat up in bed, dazed and bewildered, wondering what it was that made her eyes so heavy, and had left that throbbing pain in her temples.
She took up the child, with a dreary sense of weight, and once or twice almost dropped him from her arms from the heavy dulness that would not be shaken off.
“I’ve been draimin’ sure,” she said, looking about for the child. “Arrah, here he is, wide-awake, wid his fist doubled under his cheek, and his eyes smothered wid the tears, bad luck to me!”