“No. Why should I be? It isn’t sickness as frights me.”
“You have a throuble, then, honey?”
“I’m fretted about mother, Mrs Maloney. She ain’t well, and it frets me. She’s more than anybody to me, mother is. I’ve sold most of my flowers now, so I’ll go. Good afternoon to yer, Molly.”
Jill took up her basket and walked away. She spent all the rest of the day going from one low haunt to another, looking in vain for Mrs Robinson. It did not occur to her to seek for her mother at Betsy Peters’s, but, on her way back to their own little flat, she ran up against Betsy, who stopped her at once to ask about Poll.
“She wor werry bad last night,” explained Betsy, and then she told of the incident which had occurred at the chemist’s shop.
“I thought I’d call round and ask arter her to-day,” said Betsy. “Her looks frightened me, and she’s real bad—real bad, Jill Robinson. The chemist knows, and so do I, what ails her.”
“It’s more nor I do,” said Jill, drawing herself up. For a brief instant she feared that Mrs Peters was referring to Poll’s unfortunate habit of taking more than was good for her. Jill’s black eyes flashed, and poor, meek, pale-faced Betsy started back a step in alarm.
“I don’t mean nothink bad, dearie,” she said. “It’s the heavy hand of the Lord that’s laid on your mother. She ought to go to a hospital. I don’t hold by ’em in most cases, but your mother ought to go.”
Jill felt herself turning very pale. “What do yer mean?” she said.
The woman stepped forward and whispered a word in her ear. The ugly sound caused her to reel for a moment, a faint dizziness came over her; she clutched Mrs Peters by the shoulder to keep herself from falling.