“To be sure she can stay here,” said Polly, not over graciously; for if Mr. Clinkers should come in the while, it might alter his ideal.
“Ah, so very sad; so very sad, miss, ainʼt it now?”
“Yes,” said Amy, having no desire to pursue the subject with Polly. But Pollyʼs tongue could no more keep still than a frond of maiden–hair fern in the draught of a river archway.
“Ah, so very sad! To think of him go, quite young as he is, to one of them moonstruck smilems, where they makes rope–mats and tiger rugs! As ‘andsome a young man, miss, as ever I see off a hengine; and of course he must be such, being as he is your brother.”
Before poor Amy could answer, Mrs. Ducksacre came to fetch her, and frowned very hard at Polly, who began to look out of the window. In spite of all her faith and hope, the child could scarcely get up the stairs, till her father came to meet her.
“There is no one with him now, dear; Mrs. Jupp is in the sitting–room, so very kindly lent us by the good landlady. Only two more pairs of stairs, and there our Cradock lies, not a bit worse than he was; if anything, a little better; and his faithful little Wena with him: she wonʼt leave him, night or day, dear. Give me your hand, Amy. Why, I declare, it is rather dark, when you get too far from the windows! Madam, come in with us.”
But Eliza Ducksacre, though little versed in mintage, and taking pig–rings for halfpence, knew when her presence had better be absence, as well as a sleeping partner does at the associationʼs bankruptcy. So, after showing them up to the door, she slipped away into the side–cupboard which Mr. Rosedew had called a “sitting–room.”
Then John took Amyʼs bonnet off (after ruining the strings), and stroked her pretty hair down, and took her young cheeks in his hands, and begged her not to tremble so, because she would quite upset him. Only she might cry a little, if she thought it would do her good. But when she put her hand up, and gave a dry sob only, the father led her very tenderly into the little chamber.
It was a wretched little room, like a casual pauperʼs home, when he gets one, only much lower and smaller. Amy took all of it in at a glance, for in matters of that sort a womanʼs perception is, when compared to a manʼs, as forked lightning compared to a blunt dessert fork.
She even knew why the bed was awry; which her father could sooner have written ten scolia than discover. The bed was placed so because poor Cradock, jumping up all of a sudden in an early stage of illness, and before his head grew soft, had knocked a great piece of plaster away from the projecting hip–beam.