Chapter Fourteen.
Meg, after her interview with Warden, went straight bade to what home she possessed. Her violent anger, her passion of tears, had left behind them a kind of calm—nay more, a very deep calm; it was as though a thundercloud had rolled across a very blue sky, leaving it when past bluer and brighter than before. Meg, though tired in body and a little faint, for she had eaten no food that day, felt as though she was being carried home in the arms of Jesus. She looked up at the sky and behind all its London gloom and fog she seemed to see the smile of Jesus shining through directly upon her. She ran down the ladder to her cellar with almost gay steps, and she found Faith there, still very depressed and miserable. She told her of her interview with her father, by no means relating the whole scene, but simply that part which concerned little Roy. Faith listened and shook her head more dismally than ever.
“I seen mother in a dream last night,” she said; “she come close to me and axed me what I had done wid Roy. I ought never to have left my little Roy wot mother give me to mind when she was dying; it’s all my fault as little Roy is lost.”
“Why that’s som’ut like wot yer father said,” answered Meg. “He said as he wor a hard man, and it wor his fault. It seems to me that wot you ought both to do is to get down on yer bended knees and pray most bitter hard to Jesus to furgive yer; when He ha’ furgiven yer He’ll let you have little Roy back again.”
Faith stared very hard at Meg but made no reply, and Meg having devoured a small piece of dry crust, which remained over from the little which she had put carefully by for Faith to eat while she was out, lay down on the bed and dropped asleep. She awoke in the dusk of the evening to find Faith kneeling by her bed. Faith had lit a little bit of fire, and its cheerful rays revealed a change in her thin face, her eyes had lost their hardness and were full of tears.
“Meg, Meg!” she said, “near h’all the time you ha’ bin asleep I ha’ bin praying, and I think, I do think as Jesus has quite forgiven me.”
“Ah! ’tis jest wonderful how willin’ He is to forgive,” said Meg, “and wot cuts me h’up so is when folks know that, why they’re allus a fretting of Him.”
“Well, I’ll try not to fret Him no more,” said Faith.
“Faith,” said Meg lying still, and gazing hard at Faith out of her big black eyes, “how long ’ud you say as gals like me, under-fed, under-clothed gals, ’ud be like to live?”
“I dunno,” answered Faith in some surprise; “I suppose same as other folks.”