The excitement of the move was a great strain on Prudence in her weak state of health; but Mrs. Perkins proved an admirable nurse, and though quite unable to leave her bedroom for the next few days, the unhappy spinster rejoiced at being free from the supervision of the medical woman.
CHAPTER XXI.
AT THE ARROW STREET POLICE COURT.
Nervous people are generally too early, and on the fatal Monday morning Miss Prudence Semaphore, who was still weak and ill, but meantime had found comparative repose in her quiet and obscure lodgings, presented herself at the door of the Arrow Street Police Court almost as soon as it was opened. She was dressed all in black, and with her white face and long veil looked like a newly made widow.
The baby farming case had excited great interest in the neighbourhood, where “good Mrs. Brown” was a well-known personage, and though three cases stood before it on the list, already dirty drabs from the surrounding alleys, with still dirtier infants clasped in their arms, had gathered on the pavement in hope of seeing the prisoner and witnesses arrive.
Prudence had the satisfaction of hearing herself described as “the mother o’ one o’ Sal Brown’s children,” and of being threatened with personal violence by a brawny matron, who shook her fist under the poor lady’s nose, and exclaimed, in an access of virtuous indignation, “I know your sort, I do,” promising, if Prudence would come outside, to give her “a jolly good ’iding.” At this point a policeman interfered, and conducted the terrified victim to a private room where she awaited in misery the usher’s summons.
Meantime the witnesses began to collect. The various serjeants and detectives concerned in the case, the spectators of Sal Brown’s war dance when she used a baby as a weapon, and others arrived singly or in groups. Amongst the rest came a workhouse matron, and an assistant in charge of the infants concerned, since in accordance with the usual procedure, the infants had been sent to the workhouse while awaiting the trial of Sal.
The matron was a portly, red-faced woman of fifty, with that brusqueness of manner acquired by officials accustomed to deal with those whom they consider their inferiors. Her friend was a pale and highly genteel person who made many objections to appearing in court at all. The children, miserable, pinched objects, with the big, bright eyes, long lashes, and weird faces of the starved, were packed by twos and threes in perambulators in charge of a couple of pauper women, fifteen unhappy infants in all.
Weirdest of the party, was the elder Miss Semaphore, in a pink cotton frock, an infant’s bib, and an old and often-washed white shawl. Little Augusta was a singularly unprepossessing baby.
“Drat the child,” said the workhouse nurse. “She has just the look of a little old woman, and I never did see one of her age that took such notice of everything a body does. I declare to you I took a sip of her milk just to see if it was sweet, and when I turned round I caught her eye, an’ I’m blest if she didn’t wink. It gave me quite a turn. A real wicked wink it was, an’ when I gave her the bottle if she didn’t push it away, and wipe the top before she’d drink a drop.”
“She was starved, nurse,” said her subordinate. “That’s what it was. Them children that is starved has a look and ways as if they was ninety. Many a one of them I’ve seen brought in here, so I knows the kind.”