“Why you’re wet, and like ice!” cried Polly, as she realised the facts. “Oh, my poor dear! How thin! How ill you look! Oh, my dear, my dear!”
She burst into a piteous fit of sobbing, but her hands were busy all the time, as she half led, half carried her visitor to Tom’s big Windsor chair, and then piled up some of the odd blocks of wood, of which there were always an abundance from the shop.
“Oh, what shall I do?” muttered Polly; and then her ideas took the customary womanly route for the panacea for all ills, a cup of tea, which was soon made, and a few mouthfuls seemed to revive the fainting woman.
“She ought to have the doctor,” muttered Polly. “Oh, if Tom would only come!” Then aloud—“Oh, Miss Julia, my dear, my dear!”
“Hush!” said her visitor, in a low, painful voice, as if repeating words that she had learned by heart; “the Julia you knew is dead.”
“Oh, no, no, my dear young mistress,” sobbed Polly, and she went down upon her knees, and threw her arms round the thin, cold figure in its squalid clothes. “Tom will be home directly, and he shall fetch the doctor and master. Oh, my dear, my dear! that it should come to this! But tell me, have you left Jock Morrison?”
The wretched woman shuddered.
“They have taken him away,” she whispered; “he was in trouble—with some keepers—but he will be out some day, and I must go to him again. He will want me, Polly—and I must go!”
Polly Morrison gazed at her with horror, hardly recognising a lineament of the girl in whose soft hair she had taken such pride, and whom she had admired in her youth and beauty.
“But you must not go back,” cried the little woman. “There, there, let your head rest back on the chair. Let me go and fetch you a pillow.”