She was still playing with the dressing-jacket. She smoothed it, and patted it, and folded it up and laid it beside her on the bed. She took up her pocket-handkerchief and shook it out and folded it and put it on the top of the dressing-jacket.
"What are you doing, you darling?"
"Going to bed."
She looked at you with a half-happy, half-frightened smile, because you had found her out. She was putting out the baby clothes, ready. Serious and pleased and frightened.
"Who will take care of my little children when I'm laid aside?"
She knew what she was lying in the big bed for.
X.
It was really bedtime. She was sitting up in the armchair while Catty who was Jenny made her bed. The long white sheet lay smooth and flat on the high mattress; it hung down on the floor.
Mamma was afraid of the white sheet. She wouldn't go back to bed.
"There's a coffin on the bed. Somebody's died of cholera," she said.