She did not know the power of the Canon’s address. At the sound of her voice, the triumvirate, neither understanding nor heeding her warning, stepped firmly into the room.
‘I’m so sorry your daughter is ill,’ began Barbara, fumbling hastily in her pocket. ‘Would three and sevenpence halfpenny be any good, do you think? And I’ve got ten shillings more in my––’
Jean nudged her violently, but the woman’s eyes had glistened at the mention of money, and Babs emptied her purse impetuously on the table.
‘Bless ye, missy, for sure!’ said the woman, gratefully. ‘Lilian Eliza, she be goin’ to the infirmary to-morrow, she be, and I can git her Neighbour Bunce’s spring-cart wi’ that, I can.’
Her evident gratitude reproached Jean, and she forgot all about the dangers of indiscriminate charity. She took the other two by the hand and pulled them away to the door.
‘We’ll come back again directly, Mrs. Hearne,’ she called out. Then the triumvirate broke into a run, and vanished along the road before the eyes of the bewildered woman.
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Angela, panting, when they once more climbed the gate at the bottom of the nine-acre field.
‘We’re going straight to the larder, straight as we can go; and then, we’re just going to bag all the food we can carry,’ answered Jean, in an odd, determined sort of tone. ‘Did you see the look on that woman’s face when you gave her the money, Babe? I believe–I believe they’ve all had nothing to eat for weeks! It’s–it’s horrible to think of!’
There was a sob in her voice, and the other two were silent from sympathy and a kind of awkwardness. They had never heard Jean talk like this before, and it finished the work begun by the Canon’s address. There was not the thought of a scruple in either of their minds when they arrived at the back of the house, and Jean bade them climb up by the water-butt and get into the larder through the open window.
‘There’s sure to be a hook you can undo so as to move the wire netting aside,’ she told them. ‘If we went round to the door, some one might make a fuss; and there’s no time for fusses.’