For some wise and loving reason, all of which she should know some day, He had tested her very sorely, but in her hour of extremest and darkest need He sent her great and unexpected succour, and that night Flo left the gloomy and wretched cellar in Duncan Street, never to return to it. She was unconscious of this herself, and consequently gave the miserable place no farewell looks.
From that long swoon into which she sank she awoke with reason quite gone, so was unaware of anything that happened to her.
She knew nothing of that drive in the cab, her head pillowed on Mrs Jenks’ breast; nothing of that snowy little bed in Mrs Jenks’ room where they laid her; nothing of the kind face of the doctor as he bent over her; nothing of anything but the hard battle with fever and pain, the hard and fierce conflict with death she had got to fight. For a week the doctor and Mrs Jenks both thought that she must die, and during all that time she had never one gleam of reason, never one instant’s interval from severe pain. At the end of that time the crisis came, as it always does, in sleep. She fell asleep one evening moaning with all the exhaustion caused by fever and suffering, but the faithful little woman who sat by her side marked how by degrees her moans grew less, then ceased; her breathing came slower, deeper, calmer.
She was sleeping a refreshing, healing sleep.
Late that night Flo awoke.
Very slowly her eyes, the light of consciousness once more in them, travelled round the apartment. The last thing she remembered was lying very ill and very hungry on the damp cellar floor, the dog’s faithful face close to her, and a loaf of bread within reach of her starving lips. Where was she now?
In a pure, white, delicious bed, in a room that might have been a little room out of heaven, so lovely did it look in her eyes. Perhaps she was dead and was in heaven, and God had made her lie down and go to sleep and get rested before she did anything else.
Well, she had not had enough sleep yet, she was dreadfully, dreadfully tired still. She turned her weary head a very little—a dog was lying on the hearth-rug; a dog with the head, and back, and eyes of Scamp, and those eyes were watching her now lazily, but still intently. And seated farther away was Mrs Jenks, darning a boy’s sock, while a boy’s jacket lay on her lap.
The sight of the little woman’s pale face brought back further and older memories to Flo, and she knew that this little room was not part of heaven, but was just Mrs Jenks’ beautiful little earthly room.
How had she got here? however had she got here from that cellar where she had lain so ill and unable to move?