"No! I'm tied just as tight!"
Then for a little they were quiet, while Johnnie tried to study out a way of helping her. But he failed. And soon she began to fret, and move impatiently, now sobbing softly, as if to herself, again only sighing.
He strove to soothe her. "It won't be long till mornin'," he declared. "If y' could make b'lieve y' was in bed, and count sheep——"
"But the ropes hurt me!" she complained. "I want them off! They hurt me awfully, and I feel sick!"
"Well," he proposed, "let's pretend y're so sick y' need a nurse, and——"
But she would not wait for the rest of his plan. "Oh, that kind of thinking won't help me!" she protested. "And I don't want anybody but my mother!" Then sobbing aloud, "Oh, I want my mother! I want my mother!"
The cry smote his heart, bringing the tears that had not come when Barber was beating him. Never before, in all the years he had known her, had she cried out this longing. Saying scarcely anything of that mother who was gone, leaving her so lonely, so bereft, always she herself had been the little mother of the flat.
"Course y' do!" he whispered, gulping. "Course y' do!"
"If she'd only come back to me now!" she went on. "And put her arms around me again!"
"Don't, Cis!" he pleaded tenderly. "Oh, please don't! Ain't y' got me? That's pretty nice, ain't it? 'Cause we're t'gether. Here I am, Cis! Right in reach, almost. Close by! Don't cry!"
