“No, no!” she answered eagerly, “the poor darling has been spared. It is the old man who is gone to his long home. Jenny has been about this fortnight now, and nursed the old man through it all.”
“Was it fever?” asked Harry, more for the sake of speaking than from curiosity, for he wanted to conceal his weakness as far as he could.
“Some say it was; but I don’t think so,” she replied. “But you ought to be at home, with the rain falling like this. Why, you look fit to be in your bed and nowhere else.”
“Yes, yes,” said Harry, “I’ll go soon.”
“He was very old,” said the woman; “I knew him years ago, when I lived over there, before he broke his leg. I’ve been to see Jenny, God bless her! She’s half brokenhearted, and has now no one to look up to.”
Harry Smith, in spite of the inclement, wintry weather, stopped by the mouth of the court awaiting the coming of the funeral, and a faint flush came into his hollow cheeks as he thought of the woman’s last words, and wondered whether Jenny would now choose a protector, and whether that protector would be John Wilson.
Story 4--Chapter VII.
Harry Smith, the very shadow of his former self, waited until the procession neared, and then stood aside to let the one sad woman pass to the shabby funeral carriage, after which he made his way back into the court, to listen to the narrative of the sad havoc worked by the disease while he had been tossing in delirium upon his own pallet. But he went home sad and yet happy, as he pondered upon some information he had gained from the neighbours; for he learned for certain that no one whose visits he had dreaded had passed up the court to Number 5.
The days glided on. It was the depth of winter, and the snow lay thickly upon the house-tops. It was churned up into a black mud sometimes in the streets; but, in spite of powdering blacks, it still struggled to lie white and pure upon the ledges and window-sills. The storm came again and again, and Jenny’s window-sill was covered, and somehow in the morning, when she rose, there lay a tiny bunch of sweet violets in amongst the snow. From whence did the offering come? There was but one explanation—it must have been thrown across from a neighbour’s window; and morning after morning the flowers were there, and as Jenny took each bunch and placed it in water she thought of the market and its floral treasures even at that season of the year, and a blush burned hotly in her cheek, for she remembered who had brought roses during the illness, and wondered why he had ceased to come.