After a while her sobs ceased and she felt sleepy. She pulled up a blanket and quilt which she had been lying on and thought that she might as well sleep a little, and waken with fresh courage and fresh plans. Like many other people Juliet made her most earnest prayers when she was in trouble. She turned and knelt upon the bed, saying all her petitions with earnestness; then she lay down again, and her dreams took her far away from all her many misfortunes.
CHAPTER IX.
BACK IN LONDON.
When Juliet awoke in the early morning she could not at first remember where she was. It was not the old home in London, crowded with father, mother, and children. It was not the new home at Littlebourne, where Emily's bed lay beside that of her cousin. Oh, but it was the prison in which the dreadful Mrs. Bosher and her bonnet had shut up an unhappy girl and kept her all night!
Looking round the room, Juliet saw on the boards close to the door the same basin of bread-and-milk which she had refused to eat on the previous evening. Mrs. Bosher must have put it in noiselessly while her prisoner was asleep. The prisoner could not resist her fare this morning, but ate it all up, though the milk was just what she called "on the turn."
She did not know what the time was; the sun rose so early that he shone as brightly at five o'clock as at seven o'clock. What did it matter? Juliet could not get out until her jailer chose to release her. As soon as Mrs. Bosher opened the house-door, or sent her out for water, or for a cabbage, or to hang up wet linen, she would make off and run away somewhere. Not through the wood, lest the awful brother might be there again, and the utmost rigour of the law prosecute the trespasser; but somewhere, anywhere.
Juliet lay down and slept again. She was disturbed by the door of the room being opened, and the bonnet nodding in.