“Let them come if they dare, my dear,” said Thisbe stoutly. “I’ve only waited for this. You know how I’ve never said word against him, but have seen and borne everything.”
“Yes, yes,” sighed Mrs Hallam.
“For, I said to myself, the day will come when she will see everything in its true light, and then—”
Thisbe said no more, but cut her sentence in half by closing her lips more tightly than they had ever been closed before, as, with a smile, she busied herself about Julia and her mother.
“I was in a way last night,” she said cheerily, as she straightened first one thing and then another in the modest lodgings she had secured, “but I daren’t come away for fear you might get here while I was looking for you. You don’t know the relief I felt when Mr Bayle knocked at the door with you two poor tired things. There, you needn’t say a word, only be quiet and rest.”
Thisbe nodded from one to the other, and smiled as if there was not a trouble in the world. Then she stood rolling up her apron, and moistening her lips, as if there was something she wanted to say but hesitated. At last she went to Mrs Hallam’s side, and took hold of the sleeve of her dress.
“Let me go and ask Mr Bayle to take berths for you on board the first ship that’s going to sail, and get taken away from this dreadful place.”
Mrs Hallam gazed at her wistfully, but did not answer for a few moments.
“I must think, Thibs,” she said. “I must think; and now I cannot, for I feel as if I am stunned.”
“Then lie down a bit, my dear Miss Milly. Do, dear. She ought to, oughtn’t she, Miss Julie? There, I knew she would. It’s to make her strong.”