“The policeman said something, and some one else spoke cheerily; but I couldn’t hear what they said, for my every thought was upon what I was going to see. And now, for the first time, the great, blinding tears came gushing from my eyes, so that when I slowly took down first one hand and then another, I was blinded, and could not see for a few moments; till, stooping a little lower, there, smashed and flattened, covered with mortar and dust, was my old red cotton handkercher tied round the basin and plate that held my dinner, dropped here by my little darling girl.
“For a few moments I was, as it were, struck dumb—it was so different a sight to what I had expected to see; and then I leaped up and laughed, and shouted, and danced—the relief was so great.
“‘Come on!’ I cried again; and then, for an hour or more, we were at it, working away till the light began to come in the east, and tell us that it was daybreak.
“Late as it was, plenty of people had stopped all the time; for, somehow or another, hundreds had got to know the little bright, golden-haired thing that trotted backwards and forwards every day with my dinner basin. She was too little to do it, but then, bless you, that was our pride; for the wife combed and brushed and dressed her up on purpose. And fine and proud we used to be of the little thing, going and coming—so old-fashioned. Why, lots of heads used to be thrust out to watch her; and seeing how pretty, and artless, and young she was, we used to feel that every one would try and protect her; and it was so. Time after time, that night, I saw motherly-looking women, that I did not know, with their aprons to their eyes, sobbing and crying; and though I didn’t notice it then, I remembered it well enough afterwards—ah! and always shall; while the way in which some of the men worked—well-to-do men, who would have thought themselves insulted if you’d offered ’em five shillings for their night’s job—showed how my poor little darling had won the hearts of all around. Often and often since, too, I could have stopped this one, and shook hands with that one for their kindness; only there’s always that shut-upness about an Englishman that seems to make him all heart at a time of sorrow, and a piece of solid bluntness at every other time.
“Well, it was now just upon morning, and we were all worked up to a pitch of excitement that nothing could be like. We had been expecting to come upon the poor child all the afternoon and night, but now there could be no doubt of it. She must be here; for we were now down in the stoke-hole, working again with more vigour than had been shown for hours. Men’s faces were flushed, and their teeth set. They didn’t talk, only in Whispers; and the stuff went flying out as fast as others could take it away.
“‘Easy, easy,’ the sergeant of police kept saying, as he and two of his men kept us well lit with the strong light of their lanterns.
“But the men tore on, till at last the place was about cleared out, and we had got to a mass of brick wall sloping against one side, and a little woodwork on the other side, along with some rubbish.
“And now was the exciting time, as we went, four of us, at the brick wall, and dragged at it, when some women up above shrieked out, and we stood trembling, for it had crumbled down and lay all of a heap where we had raised it from.
“‘Quick!’ I shouted, huskily. And we tore the bricks away till there was hardly a scrap left, and we stood staring at one another.
“‘Why, she ain’t here, arter all!’ says a policeman.