"Massige! that's same as kneading dough, ain't it, Sir!"
"That's it! Miss—Miss—oh! Leonie will want the most attention, she is only just alive. I will give her another two minutes, and if nothing has happened by then I'll stop her, though it'll be an awful risk!"
"What's she a-doin' of, Sir?"
"She's forcing her own life, her vitality into her friend; she's practically raising the dead!"
"Lor, Sir!"
He had just raised his hand to touch Leonie, praying to heaven for the girl's reason, when she suddenly flung back her head.
Up through the house-top, to the stars, the heavens, rushed the terrible cry, wailing as wails the wolf who has lost its mate, insisting as insists one who has staked his all on one final throw, imploring as implores the mother in the last dire throes of childbirth.
What the language was, what the words meant, to whom the prayer was addressed, no one knew.
But at the third terrible appeal to God, or Fate, or Death, or Life, and even as those who listened outside and those who ceased their labours in the room stuffed their ears with their fingers and sobbed, little Jessica opened her eyes, and smiled just as Leonie, flinging up her arms, crashed face downwards on the floor.