But now Dick must work with the hard labour the law accords to its prisoners. That bright little face must look out behind a prisoner’s mask, he must be confined in the dark cell, he must be chained to the whipping-post, he must be half-starved on bread and water. Out of prison he was half his time without the former of these necessities of life, and at his age he would not be subjected to hard labour.
But Flo knew nothing of these distinctions, and all the terrible stories she had ever heard of prisoners she imagined as happening to Dick now. So the night before the trial had been one long misery to the sensitive, affectionate child.
Now the trial was over, now Dick was really consigned to prison, or to what seemed to Flo like prison. With their eyes they had said good-bye to each other, he from the prisoners’ dock, she from her place in the witnesses’ box. The parting was over, and she was lying alone in her dark cellar, on her straw pallet, bruised, hurt, faint, but strange to say no longer unhappy, strange to say happier than she had ever been in her life before.
She had often heard of bright things—she had often imagined bright things, but now for the first time she heard of a bright thing for her.
She was not always to be in pain, she had heard to-day of a place with no pain; she was not always to be hungry, poor, and in rags—she had heard to-day of food enough and to spare, of white dresses, of a home more beautiful than the Queen’s home, of a good time coming to her who had always, always, all her life had bad times.
And Dick, though he was a thief, might share in the good time, and so might Jenks.
Our Saviour gave of His good times to thieves, and sinners, and poor people, if only they wanted them, and of course they had only to hear of them to want them.
“May I come down, Flo?” called out Janey’s voice at this juncture, at the cellar door. “Father ’ave beat me hawful; may I come down and set by yer a bit?”
The lame girl was sobbing loudly, and without waiting for Flo’s reply she scrambled down the ladder and threw herself on the bed by the child’s side.
“There now,” she said, panting out her passionate words, “’ee ’ave me hall black and blue, and my lame leg ’urt worse nor hever; and I wish ’ee wor in prison, I do; and I wish I wor dead, I do.”