Next morning, when Mrs. Tyke called Jinnie, Jinnie tried to rise, but found that she could not: she was too feeble and wretched. Mrs. Tyke saw this, and she did not compel Jinnie to get up. Mrs. Tyke was beginning to be frightened. So Jinnie fell asleep again, and when she awoke it was broad daylight, and a man with what seemed to be an angelic face was standing beside her. It was Thomas Elwood. Jinnie was startled; her first impression was that this was Kris Kingle, come in answer to her prayer. But when Jinnie looked at the finger-hole she had made in the fire-board and at the man, and particularly at the circumference of his hat, it seemed to her impossible, if this was Kris Kingle, that he should have come in by way of Mrs. Tyke’s chimney.
Thomas Elwood spoke to her and asked her if she suffered much. She said yes, and then she asked him if he really was Kris Kingle.
Thomas smiled and said,—
“No, dear child; but I am thy friend, and I am going to take thee away from this misery and keep thee until thee is well again.”
Then he lifted Jinnie in his arms, bore her downstairs and out, and placed her in a carriage.
“Where is Mrs. Tyke?” thought Jinnie. Mrs. Tyke was at a magistrate’s office, listening to Mrs. Brown and others of the neighbors while they testified of her brutal treatment of Jinnie. The lady who had brought Jinnie home was there also; and Jinnie was kindly pressed by the magistrate to tell what Mrs. Tyke had done to her.
Mrs. Tyke gave bail and went home. Thomas Elwood took Jinnie to his own house, and his wife wept as he told her how the child had been tortured. She carried Jinnie upstairs and washed her, and dressed her in clothes that Jinnie thought were wonderful, though they were so plain. Then she kissed Jinnie and said to her,—
“I once had a little girl of thy age; but a year ago she died. She even looked like thee, my dear.”
Jinnie was so weak that she had to lie upon the bed when the washing and dressing were over; “and such a bed!” thought Jinnie. Thomas Elwood’s wife brought some breakfast up to her, and Jinnie thought that she had never tasted anything so good. She did not know that such delicious food could be found anywhere in the world.
Jinnie grew better and stronger in a few days, and Thomas Elwood and his wife became so much attached to her that they resolved that they would keep her and adopt her in the place of the child that had been taken away from them.