While this went on in the waiting-room, Prudence was sitting in an agony of apprehension expecting the summons.
At last the case of The Queen v. Brown was called, and Sal was put forward on remand charged with the criminal neglect of certain infants under one year, committed to her charge, and for that she, an unlicensed person, did receive more than one such infant, contrary to the regulations of the Act 25 Victoria, section 22, clause 4.
An officer from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children deposed that the police had informed him of the deplorable condition of the unhappy infant, whom Sal was using as an offensive weapon on the occasion of the arrest. He went to the station where the woman had been charged, obtained her name and address, and proceeded to make enquiries. A graphic description of Plummer’s Cottages followed, and of the wretched objects found there—starved, dirty, and miserable.
Witness after witness was called to testify to the children being left for hours without food, fire, or attention. The children were formally exhibited. The workhouse matron deposed to their condition when admitted.
Finally, it was announced that the names and addresses of parents or other relatives of the children had been found, some of them people of good position, and that they would be brought forward to swear to their condition when delivered over to the prisoner.
There was a thrill of excitement in court, anticipative of scandals. People of good position do not hand over babies to a Sal Brown without strong reason. To the rustle and stir succeeded a strained silence as the usher called the name of “Prudence Semaphore.”
CHAPTER XXII.
A SCENE IN COURT.
Miss Prudence Semaphore, in after years describing her sensations when placed in the witness box, was accustomed to say she didn’t know whether she stood on her head or her heels. If any desire to experience the feeling, without enduring the varied miseries that a cruel fate inflicted on the unhappy lady, let them, if unaccustomed to public speaking, be called on for an afterdinner speech. The swimming in the head, the sea of faces dimly seen, the weakness in the knees, dryness of the tongue and throat, confusion of thought and general helplessness experienced, will help them to realise her emotions. The impossibility of dying suddenly then and there, ere forced to break silence, will appear a hardship, but they will be spared the terror of having somehow brought themselves within the clutches of the law, that appalled Miss Prudence. Speechmaking is not penal. Would that it were; but a respectable spinster, mixed up in a baby farming case, the only witness to her truth and bonâ fides a helpless, speechless infant, can scarcely hope to clear herself satisfactorily.
Prudence knew that her story was wild and improbable; her illness had further disheartened her. She felt sure that no one would believe her on her oath, and this conviction gave a hesitation to her manner, an uncertainty to her statements, that branded her in the eyes of all as an audacious but unskilful liar.
“Come! she might ’ave told a better one than that!” was the whispered remark in the gallery when, in answer to a question, she declared that the infant handed over by her to the prisoner was her sister.