Jill: A Flower Girl

by L. T. Meade

When Silas said these words Jill felt a sick agony creeping over her. They were the words she had longed to hear said over her and Nat. She turned her white face away, and, quickly leaving the market, ran home to Howard’s Buildings as fast as her feet could carry her. Silas, in excellent spirits, began to attend to his plants, flowers, and fruit. Any slight remaining uneasiness which might have lingered in his mind after old Peters’s words was now removed. Of course Jill loved him, but her pallor and the sad expression in her eyes were both accounted for by some secret sorrow in connection with her mother. Silas determined to get at this grief, and if possible to remove it after he and Jill were married. He was too busy to-day, however, to give it any further thought; he had not only to attend to his many customers, but he had to make arrangements for the two or three days’ holiday he meant to give himself after his wedding. He had to attend to a list of orders which Aunt Hannah had provided him with for the wedding-feast; and last, but not least, he must manage to call at Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital with the little shawl for old Peters’s sister, Rachel Riggs. Silas knew Mrs Riggs, and with all those new qualities which the sunshine of prosperity had awakened into being, it occurred to him that it would give her pleasure if a bunch of flowers accompanied the shawl. Silas would never have thought of giving Mrs Riggs flowers in the old days, but he did many things now which astonished himself.

When his business at Covent Garden was ended, he selected a large bunch of some of his commoner flowers, and started off to walk to the hospital. He had gone nearly half-way when it suddenly entered into his head that it would largely add to Peters’s happiness, if he, Silas, could contrive to see Mrs Riggs for a moment or two. He knew enough about hospitals to be aware that he would not be admitted until the afternoon, so, leaving his flowers at the shop of a friend, he got through his other work, and finally arrived at Saint Bartholomew’s on the stroke of two o’clock, the earliest hour when visitors are admitted.

Silas was taken at once to the women’s ward, where Mrs Riggs was sitting up in her clean bed with a “nightingale” round her shoulders. Her wizened old face was lit up with a curious mixture of surprise, pleasure, and alarm when she saw Silas coming gingerly on tiptoe down the long ward to see her. Her remembrance of Silas in the past was not a pleasant one—he was morose, intensely rough and disagreeable—a very upright man, of course, but the last to put himself out of the way to do a neighbour a kindness. It was astonishing, therefore, to see him with a little brown-paper parcel in one hand and an enormous bouquet of flowers in the other advancing to meet her. Silas’s rough face, too, was all aglow, his coarse mouth was wreathed in smiles, his little ferrity, deep-set eyes were the windows through which a happy soul looked.

Mrs Riggs said, “My sakes alive! wot’s come to the man?” under her breath. She stretched out her thin, old hand, which Silas clasped, and then, sitting down by her, he began to chat about the small doings of Newbridge and its inhabitants.

Peters’s cough was certainly better, the Hibberty Joneses were in good case, Mary Ann Hatton looked quite fine for her. In short, the village was enjoying a heyday of prosperity, and Silas felt sure that they would all give Mrs Riggs a hearty welcome when she returned. He knew that the old woman was regarding him with a sharp stare of curiosity; he was well aware that she was amazed at the change in him, but he did not feel inclined to betray his happy secret. There was a new sweet shyness about him when he thought of Jill and the great, tender love he bore her.

He had bid Mrs Riggs good-bye and was leaving the ward, when a full voice, rich in tone although somewhat weakened by recent illness, was heard pronouncing his name.

A woman who was lying stretched out flat in a bed at the far end of the ward was calling to him. Her voice had a piteous ring in it; her black eyes were fixed on him with a world of entreaty in their glance.

“Come yere, Mr Lynn, for the love o’ heaven, come yere,” said the voice.

Lynn looked up the ward and immediately recognised Poll Robinson. His heart gave a heavy thump; he was conscious of a sudden weight of apprehension on him, and then, still walking on tiptoe, he marched up the ward and stood by the sick woman’s side.

“Well, I’m blessed,” he exclaimed, looking down at her. “So you’re here, and that’s the secret wot’s troubling Jill.”