The nurse, with alarm depicted on every feature, and drops of perspiration standing on her brow, gave up her efforts to hold the child, whose weight had increased amazingly, and put her sitting on the bench beside her, watching her the while with undisguised trepidation.
Everyone saw that something extraordinary was going on. Augusta choked, whooped, gurgled, turned red and spotty, purple and white, alternately. She seemed passing every minute through months of childish growth, long-past croups, convulsions, measles, and so forth, sweeping over her in flashes, as she began once more her painful, and in this case, rapid, journey towards maturity.
The public in the gallery rose en masse. Business was a standstill. The juniors stood on benches. The magistrate, bewildered and confounded at the unexpected turn of events, wiped his spectacles with the air of a man who sees the end of all things.
The women round the children were rigid with fright, and dared not lay a finger on the prodigy. The matron was the first to recover. Her sense of propriety awoke, and rapidly taking off her long cloak, she passed it round the struggling, elderly child, who each instant was outgrowing her garments more and more.
“Oh! speak, Augusta, do speak if you can!” implored Prudence.
“Don’t you see I’m trying to?” replied Augusta, suddenly and sharply, in a clear, childish treble. “Of course what you said is true, though, as usual, you have said a great many things you were not called on to tell. I did take an overdose of that dreadful stuff, and now the effect is passing off, I am in great agony, as anyone might see, and will you please take me away at once? This is a most disagreeable position for a lady. Call a cab and take me away; what I have suffered in that woman’s clutches no tongue can tell.”
The magistrate turned pale, Sal Brown shrank into the farthest corner of the prisoner’s dock, and, with a scared face, listened to the words of her rapidly-developing protégé. Beneath the matron’s ample cloak the form of Augusta was waxing ever longer and wider, like the melon plant beneath the cloth of an Eastern juggler.
“I think, madam,” said the magistrate in broken accents, “you had better take the—it home.”
“Your worship,” hastily interposed the counsel for the prosecution, “this child, I mean lady, is a valuable witness for us. I propose that before she is permitted to leave the precincts of this court she shall be examined. The examination shall be as brief as possible. I suppose she understands the nature of an oath?”
“Of course I do. I understand everything, but really cannot undergo examination now,” said Augusta squeakily but crossly. “I do not feel able for it to-day. Some other time I shall have no objection to put your worship in possession of the facts of my compulsory residence with Mrs. Brown. There are also certain circumstances in connection with the workhouse management of infants that I should like to bring before you. At present, however, I must beg leave to retire, and seek that repose I so much need.”