There for some weeks John was a prisoner, with a fractured rib encased in strips of plaster. "In your element again, old girl!" Mahony chaffed his wife, when he met her bearing invalid trays.
"Oh, it doesn't all fall on me, Richard. Jinny's a great help—sitting with John and keeping him company."
Mahony could see it for himself. Oftenest when he entered the room it was Jinny's black-robed figure—she was in mourning for her parents; for Mrs. Beamish had sunk under the twofold strain of failure and disgrace, and the day after her death it had been necessary to cut old Beamish down from a nail—oftenest it was Jinny he found sitting behind a curtain of the tester-bed, watching while John slept, ready to read to him or to listen to his talk when he awoke. This service set Polly free to devote herself to the extra cooking; and John was content. "A most modest and unassuming young woman," ran his verdict on Jinny.
Polly reported it to her husband in high glee. "Who could ever have believed two sisters would turn out so differently? Tilly to get so ... so ... well, you know what I mean ... and Jinny to improve as she has done. Have you noticed, Richard, she hardly ever—really quite seldom now—drops an h? It must all have been due to Tilly serving in that low bar."
By the time John was so far recovered as to exchange bed for sofa, it had come to be exclusively Jinny who carried in to him the dainties Polly prepared—the wife as usual was content to do the dirty work! John declared Miss Jinny had the foot of a fay; also that his meals tasted best at her hands. Jinny even succeeded in making Trotty fond of her; and the love of the fat, shy child was not readily won. Entering the parlour one evening Mahony surprised quite a family scene: John, stretched on the sofa, was stringing cats'-cradles, Jinny sat beside him with Trotty on her knee.
On the whole, though, the child did not warm to her father.
"Aunty, kin dat man take me away f'om you?"
"That man? Why, Trotty darling, he's your father!" said Polly, shocked.
"Kin 'e take me away f'om you and Uncle Papa?"
"He could if he wanted to. But I'm sure he doesn't," answered her aunt, deftly turning a well-rolled sheet of pastry.