Annie sat up and rubbed her tired eyes. With the sunshine and brightness her versatile spirits revived; she buckled on her courage like an armour, and almost laughed at the miseries of the past few hours. Once more she believed that success and victory would be hers, once more in her small way she was ready to do or die. She believed absolutely in the holiness of her mission. Love—love alone simple and pure, was guiding her. She gave no thought to after-consequences, she gave no memory to past events: her object now was to rescue Nan, and she herself was nothing.
Annie had a fellow-feeling, a rare sympathy with every little child; but no child had ever come to take Nan’s place with her. The child she had first begun to notice simply out of a naughty spirit of revenge, had twined herself round her heart, and Annie loved Nan all the more dearly because she had long ago repented of stealing her affections from Hester, and would gladly have restored her to her old place next to Hetty’s heart. Her love for Nan, therefore, had the purity and greatness which all love that calls forth self-sacrifice must possess. Annie had denied herself, and kept away from Nan of late. Now, indeed, she was going to rescue her; but if she thought of herself at all, it was with the certainty that for this present act of disobedience Mrs Willis would dismiss her from the school, and she would not see little Nan again.
Never mind that, if Nan herself was saved. Annie was disobedient, but on this occasion she was not unhappy; she had none of that remorse which troubled her so much after her wild picnic in the fairies’ field. On the contrary, she had a strange sense of peace and even guidance; she had confessed this sin to Mrs Willis, and, though she was suspected of far worse, her own innocence kept her heart untroubled. The verse which had occurred to her two mornings before still rang in her ears—
“A soul which has sinned and is pardoned again.”
The impulsive, eager child was possessed just now of something which men call True Courage; it was founded on the knowledge that God would help her, and was accordingly calm and strengthening.
Annie rose from her damp bed, and looked around her for a little stream where she might wash her face and hands; suddenly she remembered that face and hands were dyed, and that she would do best to leave them alone. She smoothed out as best she could the ragged elf-locks which the gipsy maid had left on her curly head, and then, covering her face with her hands, said simply and earnestly—“Please, my Father in heaven, help me to find little Nan;” then she set off through the cornfields in the direction of the gipsies’ encampment.