The old wretch seized the opportunity. She raised the sleeping child and stood up, looked about, and prepared to lay her under the steps of the front stoop beside the cellar door, when, to her confusion, Owlet moved, awoke, lifted her head and inquired:
“Are we almost there?”
The woman knew now that she must soothe and deceive the child with some plausible pretext for leaving her alone for a minute—a minute in which she should make her retreat. Else, if she did not do this, the child would be frightened, would cry, and—though she saw no policeman—there might be one not too far off. So she answered:
“Yes, dearie. Pretty little Lucky Fine Feathers, we is almost there. In fact, almost at the door. But will you jest bide quiet here a minnit while I go over there and ask that boy which is the best way to get ’round to the house?”
“Is it a black boy?” Owlet inquired, unconsciously asking a leading question.
“Yes, dearie, werry black,” answered the ragpicker, intelligently following the lead.
“Then that is Puck—poor, dear, old Puck! But he’s not a boy really, though they call him so, because he’s so little, I s’pose, or because they forgot to call him anything else. But he is a man grown, a married man, too, and Ducky Darling’s uncle,” said Owlet, brightly.
“Oh! is he? Then I’ll go and speak to him directly,” said the ragpicker.
“Oh, do! And tell him you have found me. And tell him I want to see them all awful bad, and I’m coming home directly. And, oh! won’t he be glad? And won’t Lady and Ducky Darling and all of them be glad? Just as glad as I shall be. For, oh! I know they have all been grieving about me as much as I have been about them. Now we shall be so glad! And you shall be glad, too. And the poor people in that horrid place—I must have gone dead again. How did you get me out of it?” suddenly inquired Owlet, trying to piece together the broken threads of her memory.
“Brung you out of it, dearie, while you was in a dead faint,” said the woman, impatient to be off.