"Am I?" she said, wistfully, as if the idea really troubled her; "I dream of it often and often. I can feel all my bones now, and count them, when I'm in bed. Some of them are getting very sharp. The boys used to say they'd get as sharp as knives sometimes, and cut through the skin. But father said it was only boys' talk."
"Your father was right," I answered; "you must think of what he said, not the boys' talk."
"But," she continued, "the boys said sometimes people get so hungry they bite pieces out of their arms. I don't think I could ever be so hungry as that; do you?"
"Minima," I said, starting up, "let us run to Mademoiselle Rosalie's for some bread-and-milk."
"You're afraid of me beginning to eat myself!" she cried, with a little laugh. But she was the first to reach Mademoiselle Rosalie's door; and I watched her devouring her bread-and-milk with the eagerness of a ravenous appetite.
Very fast melted away my money. I could not see the child pining with hunger, though every sou I spent made our return to England more difficult. Madame Perrier put no hinderance in my way, for the more food we purchased ourselves, the less we ate at her table. The bitter cold and the coarse food told upon Minima's delicate little frame. Yet what could I do? I dared not write to Mrs. Wilkinson, and I very much doubted if there would be any benefit to be hoped for if I ran the risk. Minima did not know the address of any one of the persons who had subscribed for her education and board; to her they were only the fathers and mothers of the boys of whom she talked so much. She was as friendless as I was in the world.
So far away were Dr. Martin Dobrée and Tardif, that I dared not count them as friends who could have any power to help me. Better for Dr. Martin Dobrée if he could altogether forget me, and return to his cousin Julia. Perhaps he had done so already.
How long was this loneliness, this friendlessness to be my lot? I was so young yet, that my life seemed endless as it stretched before me. Poor, desolate, hunted, I shrank from life as an evil thing, and longed impatiently to be rid of it. Yet how could I escape even from its present phase?
CHAPTER THE TENTH.
A MISFORTUNE WITHOUT PARALLEL.