“Pina!” sternly exclaimed Anna Hammond, “unless you are coherent and tell us where you lost Lenny, we shall not know where to look for him. Speak at once! where was it that you first missed him?”
“Oh, ma’am! Oh, Miss Anna! Strike me dead for pity! Oh, do! oh, do!” cried the girl, growing wilder every moment.
“Yes, ma’am, that was about all I could get out of her either. Begging and a praying of me to take her up and hang her because she had lost the boy. To hang her, to hang her, to hang her up by the neck until she was dead, dead, dead, was all her prayer.”
“Waiter,” said Drusilla, who, though agonized with grief and fear for her lost child, was now the most self-controlled and thoughtful of the party—“waiter, go quickly and fetch a glass of wine to this girl. It may restore her faculties.”
The man sprang to do the lady’s bidding, and soon returned with a bottle of sherry and a glass.
Drusilla herself filled the glass, and kneeling down beside her, put it to the lips of the prostrate girl.
“No, no, no!” cried Pina, pushing away the glass, and spilling its contents—“no, no, no, I won’t take it, I won’t get better, I won’t live! Somebody ought to smash me for losing little Lenny, and if they don’t I’ll die myself! I will! I will!”
“Pina! nobody blames you, at least I do not. Nobody wants you to die, or to be punished. Drink this, Pina, so you may be better able to tell me about my child,” said Drusilla, gently, as she again offered wine to the girl.
“Oh, missus! Oh, missus! if it was poison I would take it cheerful, I would! for it do break my heart to look in your face and to think what I done!”
“You did nothing wicked, I’m sure. If you feel so much for me, drink this, for my sake, so that you may be better able to tell me about my child.”