"Then they would resemble the eyes of those nice children," answered Dolly, who, in the genial atmosphere of Mrs. Werner's presence, seemed to be recovering her temper and her spirits. "Do let me tell you all about it, Lenny. The mother wondered I had not taken away my beautiful wool-work, evidently imagining I wrought those wonders of sofa-pillows and anti-macassars, which so much impressed her, with my own hand." "'The last lady with whom I was,' she said, 'lamented nothing so much as her chairs; they were all done up with wool-work.'
"'Wasn't theirs forty thousand?' asked the biggest of the children, with one eye fixed on his mother's face, and the other roaming over the garden.
"'Yes, dear, it were a big thing,' she said hurriedly, evidently thinking I might feel hurt to know the 'lady' had been so much greater a personage than myself. 'She was in the public line you see, ma'am,' she went on, 'and the house was just beautiful. She cried about them chairs, she did. She said if she had known how things was a-going to be, she would have got them away anyhow.' And then the wretch went on to say how cheerful that public-house was in comparison with Homewood, and how she did hope they would get back to London before long, and how Mr. Swanland hated dogs; and how our men and their friends had got leave to take one and another, except poor old Lion, who was desired by nobody,—you remember Lion, Nora; and how she wished to gracious some one would soon take him, for 'the creature was half-starved and so savage no one dare go a-nigh him.'
"Then I asked how about the fowls and the pigeons and the cat; and the children in chorus told how the fowls were all stolen and the pigeons gone, and the cat so wild she would not come to anybody; and I wanted to get away and cry by myself, Nora, but they would not leave me—no, not for a moment.
"I had caught the braid of my dress on a bramble, and asked the woman to lend me a needle and cotton to run it on again, and when she was looking up those items and a thimble, I saw she had annexed my drawing box to her own use. 'It was a handy box,' she said. Do not imagine I cared for it, Lenny," added Dolly. "Unlike the lady in the public line, I had passed beyond that state in life when one cries for lost wool-work and desecrated girlish treasures."
"Do not go on—do not, Dolly," entreated Mrs. Werner.
"I will," answered Dolly pitilessly. "I have found my tongue and I must speak. I went out and called the cat—called and called, and at last from half a mile distant, as it seemed, the creature answered. I called and she still kept answering till she came in sight, and then, when she beheld those horrid children, she stopped—her tail straight on end, and her ears pricked up.
"'Stay where you are,' I said to the little wretches, and I went and caught and stroked her, and she rubbed her face against mine, and I felt her poor ribs, and the bones were coming through her skin—oh! Lenny, Lenny, I realized it all then—understood what our ruin meant to us and to the dumb brutes who had trusted to us for kindness."
Mrs. Mortomley laid her head on Mrs. Werner's lap, and sobbed as if her heart would break.
"Lion was wild with hunger," she went on after a pause. "When I unfastened his collar the children fled indoors, frightened lest he should eat them, and, God forgive me, I should not have cared if he had; and the horses—I could not unloose their halters and bring those poor brutes with me. I can talk about it no more.