She never made a remark herself without thinking it first and deciding how it was going to sound, so afraid was she of getting to speak like her aunt. Often she used to practise talking, or recite to herself when she thought no one was listening, but when overheard, fresh sneers were thrown at her.
"Was she going daft then? ... speaking to herself like a crazy Hottentot ... concocting impudence, no doubt ... the lunatic asylum was her place ... and don't let me hear you again, my lady, or I'll up with my hand ... etc."
One day Ina fell very ill, and Mrs. Kennedy sent a messenger flying for the doctor. When he came he shook his head gravely, and after a week or two announced that the child had dropsy. It sometimes followed on scarlet fever, he said ... especially if the child had taken cold ... probably she had been sitting on the damp ground. At once Mrs. Kennedy's imagination conjured up a picture of Ina sitting on a damp stone on the Kopje while Poppy amused herself reading a book. That was quite enough to convince her as to who was the cause of the child's illness. Thereafter she never ceased to reproach Poppy with this new crime.
"If it hadn't been for your wicked carelessness, my child wouldn't be lying at death's door now," was her eternal cry, followed by a long list of all the sins and offences committed by Poppy since first the affliction of her presence had fallen upon the Kennedys' home.
"A thorn in my side, that's what you've been ever since I first set eyes on your yellow face.... I don't know what God lets such beasts as you go on living for ... no good to anyone ... dirty, deceitful little slut ... nose always in a book ... muttering to yourself like an Irish Fenian ... ill-treating my children.... Your mother ought to have been alive, that's what ... she would have learned you ... etc."
A fresh offence was that little Ina would have no one else with her but the despised and evil one. The cry on her lips was always, "Poppy, Poppy—come, Poppy!"
She lay in her cot, white and swollen, and marbly-looking, and at first the doctor steamed her incessantly; a wire cage covered with blankets over her body, a big kettle, with its long spout stuck into the cage, boiling at the foot of the bed. She would moan and fret at the heat and Poppy had to be singing to her always; even fairy tales she would have sung to her. One day the doctor cut three slits in the instep of each poor little foot while she lay in Poppy's arms, clinging and wailing, and Poppy, quivering and sick, watched the sharp little knife and the water spouting out almost up to the ceiling—no blood came. After that, all Ina's marbly look was gone, and it was plain to see that she was nothing but a little white skeleton; and so weak she could hardly whisper to Poppy to sing to her—"There's a Friend for little children," and "Snow-white and Rose-red"—her favourite hymn and her favourite fairy-tale.
It had never occurred to Poppy that the child would die; but one day the doctor stood a long time watching her as she lay staring straight at the ceiling with her pretty brown eyes all glazy, and her little ghost hands clutching the bars of her cot, and presently he shrugged his shoulders in a hopeless way and turned to Mrs. Kennedy.
"I thought we might save her as she was so young, but——"