Shellington spoke to her.
"Look at me, child!" said he. "I want to tell you what the doctor said."
She lifted an anxious gaze filled with the emotion of a woman's soul. It was her dawning womanhood that Horace saw, and toward it his manhood was unconsciously drawn.
Ann spoke quietly:
"The doctor says that your brother will be ill many weeks, and we have decided to keep him here with us, if you consent to our arrangements."
"Ye mean," gasped Flea, snatching her hands from Horace, "ye mean that Flukey can lay in that there bed till he gets all well and all the misery has gone out of his bones?"
Ann's answer meant much to Flea. The girl had realized the import of the speech; but, that she might better understand the words, she had sent them questioningly back in her vernacular for further confirmation.
"If you are willing to stay with us," Horace was saying, "and will help us take care of him—"
He could not have offered anything else that would so have touched her. How she had longed to do something for Flukey those last hours in the graveyard! But Flea wanted no mistake. Did the gentleman understand how terribly poor they were?
"We ain't got no money, and we only own Squeaky and Snatchet."