“Yes; that mark was left when the Sikh cut me down, as I held poor John Morris’s head; and now if you please, ma’am, we’ll change the subject, for when I get talking about other people’s sorrows that old wound begins to throb.”
Chapter Twelve.
Somebody Dead.
Going about the streets of London on errands of mercy, naturally makes one observant of everything that seems in any way connected with trouble or sorrow. If I see a family moving, with all the discomforts of leaving one home for another, I immediately begin to wonder whether it is a voluntary affair or whether it is the result of misfortune. Again, a funeral always takes my attention and I find myself wondering whether the mourners could be helped or comforted by me, and I note whether the dead is young or old by the funeral trappings, and too often see that it is some tender child, though the grief is as great or greater when it is some dear wife or mother, or may be the father—the stay of some family.
My friends ought to consider me a doleful miserable person but they do not, and they never think it eccentric of me to take so much interest in houses with the window blinds drawn or shutters up, but rather give me their sympathy and help.
Noticing such matters it will be no cause for surprise that I had often marked the black crape band worn upon the arm of their uniform coats by soldiers and volunteers. The first time then that I saw driver after driver of the omnibuses along a busy line of route with a tiny black crape bow fastened on his whip I naturally became eager to know why this was, or rather who might be the important personage to whom the sign of respect was paid.
I felt as if I could give anything for an hour’s chat with one of the drivers, but how was it to be obtained? I knew they were for long hours upon the box, and that during the short time they were at home it would be hard work to get either of them to tell me what I wanted, so I set to and pondered.
I don’t know that I should have felt any compunction in taking a seat outside an omnibus, though now-a-days it would seem a very out of the way place for a lady in London streets. But I thought that if I could find one going out through the suburbs to some pleasant village it would be no more extraordinary than for a lady to take a seat upon a stage coach for a ride through one of the outlying districts beyond the reach of the rail.