"So bad that he'll soon go up to God," said Connie. Her eyes filled with tears; they rolled down her cheeks.
"Bright as dimants they be," thought the boy as he watched her. "Precious tears! I could poetise 'bout them."
"Pickles," said Connie again, "I have made Giles a promise. He sha'n't die without seeing Sue. I'm sartin sure, Pickles, that you could take me to Sue now—I'm convinced 'bout it—and I want you to do it."
"Why do you think that?" asked Pickles.
"'Cos I do," said Connie. "'Cos of the way you've looked and the way you've spoken. Oh, dear Pickles, take me to her now; let me bring her back to little Giles to-night!"
Once again that terribly mournful expression, so foreign to Pickles's freckled face, flitted across it.
"There!" he said, giving himself a thump. "W'en I could I wouldn't, and now w'en I would I can't. I don't know where she be. She's lost—same as you were lost—w'ile back. She's disappeared, and none of us know nothink about her."
"Oh! is she really lost? How terrible that is!" said Connie.
"Yus, she's lost. P'r'aps there's one as could find her. Connie, I 'ate beyond all things on 'arth to fright yer or say an unkind thing to yer; but to me, Connie, you're a star that shines afar. Yer'll fergive the imperence of my poetry, but it's drawn from me by your beauty."
"Don't talk nonsense now, Pickles," said Connie. "Things are too serious. We must find Sue—I must keep my promise."