They set out to look for a shelter. Their search, however, was so much in vain, that at last they returned and lay down under one of the wagons, on the hard ground of the public square. Sleeping so often out of doors, he had never yet taken cold.
Chapter XLVI.
The Angel of the Wild Beasts.
When Clare looked up he saw nothing between him and the sky. They had dragged the caravan from above him, and he had not moved. Abdiel indeed waked at the first pull, but had lain as still as a mouse—ready to rouse his master, but not an instant before it should be necessary.
Clare saw the sky, but he saw something else over him, better than the sky—the face of Mrs. Halliwell, the mistress of the menagerie. In it, as she stood looking down on him, was compassion, mingled with self-reproach.
Clare jumped up, saying, “Good morning, ma’am!” He was yet but half awake, and staggered with sleep.
“My poor boy!” answered the woman, “I sent you to sleep on the cold earth, with a sovereign of your own in my pocket! I made sure you would come and ask me for it! You’re too innocent to go about the world without a mother!”
She turned her face away.
“But, ma’am, you know I couldn’t have offered it to anybody,” said Clare. “It wasn’t good!—Besides, before I knew that,” he went on, finding she did not reply, “there was nobody but you I dared offer it to: they would have said I stole it—because I’m so shabby!” he added, looking down at his rags. “But it ain’t in the clothes, ma’am—is it?”
Getting the better of her feelings for a moment, she turned her face and said,—
“It was all my fault! The sov. is a good one. It’s only cracked! I ought to have known, and changed it for you. Then all would have been well!”