"Somebody is sick and I am taking care of her," she said to Mr. Tracy, who watched her through the pantomime of the death scene with a feeling, when it was over, that he had seen Gretchen die.
There was not a shadow of doubt in his mind that the sick woman was Gretchen, the nurse the stranger found in the Tramp House, and the doll baby the little girl upon whose memory that scene had been indelibly stamped, and who, with her wonderful powers of imitation, could rehearse it in every particular. Calling her to him after her play was over he took her in his lap, and kissed the little grave face where the shadow of the scene she had been enacting had left its impress.
"Jerry," he said, "that lady who just died in the bed with the cap on was your mamma, was it not?"
"'Ess," was Jerry's reply, for she still adhered to her first pronunciation of the word.
"And the other was the nurse?"
"'Ess," Jerry said again; "Mah-nee."
This was puzzling, for he had always supposed that by "mah-nee" the child meant "mam-ma;" but he went on:
"Try to understand me, Jerry; try to think away back before you came in the ship."
"'Ess, I vill," she said, with a very wise look on her face, while Mr. Tracy continued:
"Had you a papa? Was he there with you?"