“Oh! dear nurse!” said the child, looking earnestly up in her face, “let me lie by my brother!”
“Why, my pet?” said Richards.
“Oh! I think he loves me,” cried the child wildly. “Let me lie by him. Pray do!”
Mrs Chick interposed with some motherly words about going to sleep like a dear, but Florence repeated her supplication, with a frightened look, and in a voice broken by sobs and tears.
“I’ll not wake him,” she said, covering her face and hanging down her head. “I’ll only touch him with my hand, and go to sleep. Oh, pray, pray, let me lie by my brother tonight, for I believe he’s fond of me!”
Richards took her without a word, and carrying her to the little bed in which the infant was sleeping, laid her down by his side. She crept as near him as she could without disturbing his rest; and stretching out one arm so that it timidly embraced his neck, and hiding her face on the other, over which her damp and scattered hair fell loose, lay motionless.
“Poor little thing,” said Miss Tox; “she has been dreaming, I daresay.”
Dreaming, perhaps, of loving tones for ever silent, of loving eyes for ever closed, of loving arms again wound round her, and relaxing in that dream within the dam which no tongue can relate. Seeking, perhaps—in dreams—some natural comfort for a heart, deeply and sorely wounded, though so young a child’s: and finding it, perhaps, in dreams, if not in waking, cold, substantial truth. This trivial incident had so interrupted the current of conversation, that it was difficult of resumption; and Mrs Chick moreover had been so affected by the contemplation of her own tolerant nature, that she was not in spirits. The two friends accordingly soon made an end of their tea, and a servant was despatched to fetch a hackney cabriolet for Miss Tox. Miss Tox had great experience in hackney cabs, and her starting in one was generally a work of time, as she was systematic in the preparatory arrangements.
“Have the goodness, if you please, Towlinson,” said Miss Tox, “first of all, to carry out a pen and ink and take his number legibly.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Towlinson.