"I've heard you say, anyway, that you was afraid Mr Rogers'd go to the naughty place. A dozen times I've heard you say it."
"Rats!—you never did. What you heard me say was that he'd go to hell, and I was sure of it. . . . And you may call it weak, but I can't bear it," the child broke out with a cry of distress, intertwisting her fingers and wringing them. "It's dreadful—dreadful!—to sit by and watch him lyin' there, with his mind workin' and no power to speak. All the time he's wantin' to say something to me, and—and—Where's Cap'n Hocken?"
"In his parlour. I heard his step in the passage, ten minutes ago, an' the door close."
"I'm goin' down to him, if you'll excuse me," said Fancy, rising from the bedroom chair into which she had dropped in her sudden access of grief.
"Why?"
"I dunno. . . . He's a good man, for one thing. You haven't noticed any difference in him?"
"Since when?" The question obviously took Mrs Bowldler by surprise.
"Since he heard—yesterday—"
"Me bein' single-handed, with Palmerston on his back, so to speak, I hev' not taken particular observation," said Mrs Bowldler. "Last night, as I removed the cloth after supper, he passed the remark that it had been a very tirin' day, that this was sad news about Mr Rogers, but we'd hope for the best, and when I mentioned scrambled eggs for breakfast, he left it to me. Captain Hunken on the other hand chose haddock: he did mention—come to think of it and when I happened to say that a second stroke was mostly fatal—he did go so far as to say that all flesh was grass and that Palmerston would require feedin' up after what he'd gone through."
"He—Cap'n Hunken—didn' seem worried in mind, either?"