Perhaps after eating that bread that Scamp had brought her she had got much stronger, and had remembered, as in a kind of dream, her appointment with Mrs Jenks, and still in a dream, had got up and gone to her, and perhaps when she reached her room she had got very faint again and tired, and Mrs Jenks had put her into her little bed, to rest for a bit. But how long she must have stayed, and how at home Scamp looked! It was night now, quite night, and Mrs Jenks must want to lie down in her own nice pleasant bed; tired and weak as she was, she must go away.
“Please, mum,” she said faintly, and her voice sounded to herself thin, and weak, and miles off. In an instant the little pale woman was bending over her. “Did you speak to me, darling?”
“Please, mum,” said Flo, “ef you was to ’old me werry tight fur a bit, I’ll get up, mum.”
“Not a bit of you,” said Mrs Jenks, smiling at her, “you’ll not get up to-night, nor to-morrow neither. But you’re better, ain’t you, dearie?”
“Yes, mum, but we mustn’t stay no later, we must be orf, Scamp and me. ’Tis werry late indeed, mum.”
“Well, so it be,” said Mrs Jenks, “’tis near twelve o’clock, and wot you ’as got to do is not to stir, but to drink this, and then go to sleep.”
“Ain’t this yer bed, mum?” asked Flo, when she had taken something very refreshing out of a china mug which Mrs Jenks held to her lips; “ain’t this yer bed as I’m a lyin’ in, mum?”
“It is, and it isn’t,” replied Mrs Jenks. “It ain’t just that exactly now, fur God wanted the loan of it from me, fur a few nights, fur one of His sick little ones.”
“And am I keepin’ the little ’un out o’ it, mum?”
“Why no, Flo Darrell, you can hardly be doing that, for you are the very child God wants it fur. He has given me the nursing of you for a bit, and now you have got to speak no more, but to go to sleep.” Flo did not sleep at once, but she asked no further questions; she lay very still, a delicious languor of body stealing over her, a sense of protection and repose wrapping her soul in an elysium of joy. There was a God after all, and this God had heard her cry. While she was lying in such deep despair, doubting Him so sorely, He was busy about her, not fetching Janey, who could do so little, but going for Mrs Jenks, who was capable, and kind, and clever. He had given Mrs Jenks full directions about her, had desired her to nurse and take care of her.