"This is the first sleep she's had for a long spell," returned the Corporal, gazing intently on the face of his wife. "P'raps we'd better wait a bit."
For some minutes Helen silently watched the sick woman. She was between thirty and forty years of age, with face prematurely old. Her ashen grey features were very thin and her lips swollen and open, while every few moments she grasped faintly at imaginary phantoms.
"Won't you take a seat, marm?" whispered Mrs. Bond. "Mrs. 'Ardman has gone on deck for a breath or two of fresh air."
But Helen declined. The woman moaned as she slept. Then with a start, her eyes opened and she peered toward the spot where Helen stood, grasping feebly with outstretched hand.
"It's Willie," she cried, in a tone muffled by her swollen tongue. Her eyes were wide open now. "Why don't they let 'im come to me? And there's Jimmy and Jenny, too, Oh, my childer! my childer!" And she ended with a low, tearless wail. Her friends tried to soothe her, but it was no use. Waving them back, she went on with a gasp: "They won't let 'em—they won't let 'em—but am deein'—and it don't matter now."
"Willie's the lad that died last year," Mrs. Bond whispered to Helen.
Mrs. Jenkins had the only dry eyes in the cramped little room. Women do not weep when they are dying. Saliva was still drooling from her mouth, and Mrs. Bond wiped it gently away with a soft rag as she gave her a spoonful of the jelly. The cordial in it soothed her and she closed her eyes again.
"It's the reg'lations about childer," continued Mrs. Bond in a low voice. "Soldiers' wives cannot take their childer wee 'em on a march."
"Where are her children?" Helen asked with trembling lips.
"Wee 'er mother," was the reply. "She was wee 'em hersel' for a week after she came back from Spain. And they say she cut up awful when she 'ad to leave 'em again."