“It’s all right, mother, Miss wouldn’t eat as much as in my bowl. You ain’t ’ungry enough for that, be you, Miss?”
“I am very hungry,” said Flower, who was gratefully drinking the hot liquid. “I could not touch this food if I was not very hungry. If I want more soup I suppose I can have some more from the pot where this was taken. What is the matter, woman? What are you staring at me for?”
“I think nought at all of you,” said the woman, frowning, and drawing back, for Flower’s tone was very rude. “But the babe is bonny. Here, take her back, she’s like—but never mind. You’ll be sleepy, maybe, and ’ud like to rest a bit. I meant yer no harm, but Patrick’s powerful, and he and Nat, they does what they likes. They’re the sons of Micah Jones, and he was a strong man in his day. You’d like to sleep, maybe, Missy. Here, Patrick, take the bowl from the girl’s hand.”
“I do feel very drowsy,” said Flower. “I suppose it is from being out all day. This hut is smoky and dirty, but I’ll just have a doze for five minutes. Please, Patrick, wake me at the end of five minutes, for I must, whatever happens, reach the nearest town before night.”
As Flower spoke her eyes closed, and the woman, laying her back on some straw, put the baby into her arms.
“She’ll sleep sound, pretty dear,” she said. “Ef I was you I wouldn’t harm her, just for the sake of the babe,” she concluded.
“Why, mother, what’s took you? I won’t hurt Missy. It’s her own fault ef she runs away, and steals the baby. That baby belongs to the doctor what lives in the Hollow; it’s nought special, and you needn’t be took up with it. Ah, here comes Nathaniel. Nat, I’ve found a lass wandering on the moor, and I brought her home, and now the mother don’t want us to share the booty.”
Nathaniel Jones was a man of very few words indeed. He had a fiercer, wilder eye than his brother, and his evidently was the dominant and ruling spirit.
“The moon’s rising,” he said; “she’ll be at her full in half an hour. Do your dooty, mother, for we must be out of this, bag and baggage, in half an hour.”
Without a word or a sigh, or even a glance of remorse, Mrs. Jones took the cap from Flower’s head, and feeling around her neck discovered the gold chain which held the little bag of valuables. Without opening this she slipped it into her pocket. Flower’s dainty shoes were then removed, and the woman looked covetously at the long, fine, cloth dress, but shook her head over it.