On another occasion, overcome by emotion at the thought of her mother’s neglect, she said to Esther:
“I wish I was dead. I wish we were all dead. It would be a great deal better for us.”
In a moment afterward she kneeled on the ground at my side, hid her face in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept. I comforted her, and would have raised her, but she cried, No, no; she wanted to stay there!
“You used to teach girls,” she said. “If you could only have taught me, I could have learned from you! I am so very miserable, and like you so much!”
How the Jellyby children loved and trusted Esther! How all children loved and trusted her for her true sympathy!
Poor Jo swept the steps at the graveyard where the friend who spoke kindly to him lay buried, and he always said of him, “He wos wery good to me, he wos.”
And Jo’s other friends, Mr. Snagsby, whose sympathy drew half crowns from his pocket, and Mr. George, and Doctor Woodcourt, and Mr. Jarndyce, and Esther, showed their kindly sympathy for the wretched boy so fully that the reading world loved them as real friends, and this loving admiration led the Christian world to think more clearly in regard to Christ’s teachings about the little ones.
No heart can resist the plea for sympathy for such as Jo in the description of his last illness and death. When the end was very near, as Allan Woodcourt was watching the heavy breathing of the sufferer,
After a short relapse into sleep or stupor he makes of a sudden a strong effort to get out of bed.
“Stay, Jo! What now?”