Throughout the whole of that dark day Milly's mother never left the cottage; and when her husband, weary and dispirited, returned at nightfall, she could scarcely nerve herself to question him lest some word of his should add another stab to her already sorely wounded heart. When ten o'clock struck, and Abraham Lord laid his hand on the key to shoot the lock for the night, he burst into tears, and turning to his wife, said: ‘Never, my lass, wi' Milly on th' wrong side’; and for months the parents slept with an unbarred door.
‘You have a remarkable patient in Milly Lord,’ said Dr. Franks to Nurse West one morning.
‘I have indeed, doctor. I never met with another like her in all my seven years' experience.’
‘Does she talk much?’
‘At times. But I should call her a silent child; at least, she does not talk like other children. When she does talk it is to make some quaint remark, or to ask some strange question.’
‘Ah,’ said the doctor, ‘she's just asked me one. I referred her to you and the chaplain. Religion, you know, is not much in my line. But for all that, I must own it was a perplexing question.’
‘Might I ask what it was, doctor?’
‘Oh! she asked if I thought Jesus was sent here to suffer pain in order that God might find out what pain was; and if so, was it not queer that God should allow so much pain to exist. There now, nurse, you have a problem. By the way, do you think the child knows the limb has to be amputated?’