Bunty
made coffee—a great jugful. The grounds were floating on the top, certainly, but it was very hot. Pip made the girl drink two full cups and [259] ]eat a big piece of bread and butter—he heard she had had neither dinner nor tea.
Then she crept close to him again. What a dear big brother he was, and how much less terrible things looked here in the firelight, with his arm round her, than when she lay prone on the wet grass under the white, far moon.
They dare not tell Poppet to-night, her eyes were far too bright, her cheeks too flushed. So Bunty
, at a whisper from Nell, picked her up and carried her off to bed again.
“I’ll stop with you till you go to sleep,” he said, feeling her chest heave.
“I b’leeve they’re ’ceiving me,” said the poor little child. “I heard Nell whisper to you! Oh, Bunty, tell me!—oh, Baby, Baby!”
He reassured her eagerly. The crisis was quite past; the doctor said she could not help getting better now. Why, they would be playing with her again now in no time!
She cried a little from the relief, and then dropped off to sleep, holding tightly to his gentle, roughened hand.
In the sitting-room Pip was comforting Nellie as tenderly and pitifully as if he had been a woman and she a poor, little, hurt child. They had never known each other before—these two—and both [260] ]were touched and surprised at the beauty of the new knowledge.