'Does he think I shall not live long?' asked the sick woman. 'Tell me what he said, grandmother, please.'
'He said you might perhaps live a week, my dear,' said grandmother, bursting into tears, and rocking Enoch and Elijah in her arms.
Poppy's mother did not speak, but she did just what king Hezekiah did when he got a similar message, she turned her face to the wall. Grandmother did not dare to look at her for some time, and when she did she saw that her pillow was wet with tears.
'Poor lass, poor lass!' she said tenderly; 'no wonder ye cannot help fretting; it's a fearsome thing to die, it is indeed.'
'Oh, it isn't that, grandmother,' said Poppy's mother; 'it isn't that. I was thinking about the poor children.'
'And what about the children, bless 'em?' said the old woman.
'Why, I'm afraid it will go hardly with them in the House,' said the poor woman, beginning to cry afresh. 'They do say some of them old nurses are not over-good to babies, and they think 'em such a lot of trouble, poor little motherless dears! And there's Poppy, too; she's been ever such a good little girl to me, and she'll feel so lonesome-like in that big, rambling place. I don't suppose they'll let her be with the babies, for all she loves them so.'
'Now, Polly, my dear,' said grandmother, starting from her seat, 'never you say another word about that. If you think I'm going to let John Henry's bairns go into the Workhouse, why, my dear, you don't know what sort of stuff John Henry's mother is made of! Why, my lass, it would be throwing God Almighty's gifts back in His face. I've wearied for my twin babies all these years, and fretted and fumed because I'd lost them, and then as soon as He gives 'em back to me, I go and shove them off into the House! No, no, my dear,' said grandmother, 'I'm not such an old stupid as that. And as for Poppy, my lass, why, she'll be my right-hand woman! They shall come home with me, my dear, and I'll be their mother—dear, blessed little chaps—and Poppy shall be their nurse, and we'll all be as happy as ever we can be without you, my dear.'
'Oh, grandmother, it seems too good to be true,' said Poppy's mother; 'but you can never keep three children.'
'Yes, my dear, I can; my good man, he was careful and thrifty, and he saved a good tidy sum. And my lady's very good to me,—why, I live in the lodge rent free, and get my coals, and many's the coppers the folks in their carriages throws out, when I go to open the gate. You see it's a sort of a public road, my dear, and there's all kinds of folk goes by. So I've enough and to spare; only I'm lonesome often, and haven't nobody to speak to for hours together. And now the Lord's going to send me good company, and I shall be a happier woman than I've been since my good man died, and my John Henry went away; I shall indeed, my dear.'