‘Please, lady,’ she said, ‘I’ve often thought of you, and I’m so very sorry for you. Please, I’ve brought you another little baby instead of the one you put into the ground in the pretty place where the flowers and trees are. She’s a dear little baby, and when you have her you won’t cry no more.’
Flossy’s voice was very earnest, and her eyes looking up full into the lady’s face were full of the most intense sympathy. Those pretty eyes of hers were too much for the poor bereaved mother: she put her handkerchief to her own eyes, and there and then burst into fits of fresh weeping.
‘Come away, little girl, at once,’ said the indignant footman; but the lady put out one of her hands and took Flossy’s.
‘Leave the child with me,’ she said to the man. ‘I’ll be better in a moment, little girl,’ she continued, ‘and then you shall tell me what you mean; but you have upset me talking about babies: it is not long since I buried my child, my only child.’
‘I saw you,’ said Flossy, nodding her bright head. ‘I was in the cemetery and I saw you. Oh, didn’t you cry bitter! but you needn’t cry no more now, for God has sent you another little baby.’
‘No, my little girl,’ said the lady, ‘He has not. I have asked Him, but it is not His will.’
‘I guessed you’d want another baby,’ said Flossy. ‘I knew quite well you would, and she’s waiting for you round the corner with Peter and Snip-snap.
You put on your bonnet and come and look at her; she’s a real beauty; she’s got a dimple, and her name is Dickory.’
‘I’ll come,’ said the lady in an excited voice. ‘It’s the very strangest thing I ever heard. A child coming to me like that. We’ll slip out, little girl. James need not open the door for us.’
Flossy wondered who James was.