Jill: A Flower Girl

by L. T. Meade

Chapter Eight.

Jill awoke presently, rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed. A sensation of gladness was all over her, but she could not at first understand what it meant. Her sleep had been so strong and dreamless that the remembrance of her engagement to Nat Carter did not in the first moment of waking return to her.

Then she remembered it. She gave a leap of pure joy and sprang lightly out of bed. Having dressed herself neatly she stood for a moment by the window of her little room. Thankfulness was filling her whole nature. She felt so young, so joyous, that it was a delight to her even to be alive. She looked up into the cloudless summer sky and said aloud:

“I don’t know nothink ’bout the ways o’ good folks, but they say that they b’lieve in Someone up there. They call Him God. Ef there is a God I thank Him with my whole heart this morning. God up in the sky, ef you’re there, do you hear me? Jill thanks yer with her whole heart to-day.”

A faint dimness came over the girl’s bright eyes; she put up her hand to wipe it away, and then went into the kitchen.

Poll, of course, had gone to buy some flowers in the early market. She might be back at any moment.

Jill bustled about to prepare breakfast. She did not go near the dresser, which stood in one corner of the little room and was never used to hold cups and saucers or any implements of cookery. Jill’s mind was so preoccupied that she did not even observe the boys’ absence.

At last, however, the breakfast was ready. The coarse cups and saucers were placed on the little table, the coffee stood on the hob of the bright little stove. The bread and a plate of dripping were placed also on the table.

It was almost time for Poll to have returned. Jill expected each moment to hear her footstep in the passage. She sat down to wait for her, and at last remembering her brothers, turned to the press bedstead to tell them to get up. The bedstead was empty. The bed was tossed and tumbled; no boys were to be seen there. Jill felt a passing wonder at their having gone away, without breakfast, but they were always erratic in their movements, and her mind was too preoccupied with other thoughts for her to trouble herself long about them.