“And what was that?” inquired Jane, placing her arms akimbo and taking altogether a fighting attitude, which rather terrified Mary Margaret, for she was not strong enough for a combat, had any idea of the kind been in her thought.
“I don’t know what it was, but there was morphine in it and it put me into a sleep that was like dying.”
Jane Kelly laughed violently, holding her sides and appealing to the women around her with repeated nods of the head.
“Morphine, was it? ha! ha! and where did you get it? there now, where did you get it?”
“I got it from the vial you put by that young crathur there, and told me to give her a taespoonful every once in a while. White it was, and I have the taste of it in my mouth this minute.”
Jane Kelly darted down to the young woman’s bed and brought back a vial half full of some red liquid.
“White, is it?” she cried, holding the vial up to the general gaze, “and morphine? ha! ha!—just a taste of innocent paregoric, that wouldn’t hurt the baby in her arms, if she fed it to him by the teaspoonful. Why there isn’t an hour’s sleep in the whole of it. No, no, I’ll show you where she got her morphine.”
Here Jane made a dive under Mrs. Dillon’s bed, and came forth with a junk bottle, which she shook triumphantly in sight of all the curious eyes drawn upon her by this discussion. “Empty!” she exclaimed, “not a drop left. This woman drinks morphine by the bottleful! ha-ha! by the bottleful!”
Here the young patient sat up in her bed and gazed upon the scene with disturbed eyes,—Jane Kelly with the bottle in her hand and a sneering laugh on her lips, Mrs. Dillon sitting on the side of her bed, crimson with anger, her face wet with tears, and her cap-borders drooping like dahlias after a two days’ rain; half the patients in the ward leaning upon their elbows and listening with eager curiosity. This was what the young creature saw.
“No, no,” she cried, and her sweet voice ran through the discord like the chime of a silver bell stealing through a clash of iron. “She did drink something from the vial; I saw her. I know it was from the vial, and I know that it was white; you took that vial away, Kelly, and put the other in its place; my eyes were almost shut, but I saw you.”